So many words bandied about by so many people. Big, descriptive, superlative words. Unimaginable. Horrific. And so it is. But ‘unspeakable’ (Times Leader earlier this week)? Plainly it isn’t, as everyone is doing just that.

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A lot of talk about ‘risk’. What is sometimes forgotten is that there are two sorts of risk. The risk of leaving a child where it is. And the risk of removing a child from its parents when it wasn’t justified. It’s a tough call in many cases. Even if something has gone very wrong in the operation of the child protection system in Haringey (and we await the verdict of the various enquiries and investigations that have been peremptorily embarked upon to shed light on that) these are difficult decisions to make. Sometimes social workers get it wrong, thankfully most of the time errors of judgment do not result in such horrific consequences.

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Of course this must be investigated, but it does make you think – how many more social workers, how much more training and support for them could be provided with the money spent on attempting to find an answer to the question of how on earth this could have happened?

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The Family Law Week post on this case links to a number of the main sources of commentary and information in respect of Baby P. Family Lore also posts on the topic here.