Agencies involved in the Brighton neglect case did not best serve the interests of the five neglected children.

According to a leading childcare expert they followed most of the guidelines and procedures in the 1987 Children's Act, but this was not enough.

Sir Roy Meadow said despite the enormous bureaucracy, resources and efforts invested by the agencies, "they did not do what the public would feel was the right thing". Talking to the Argus, he said the children should have been removed from the home much quicker.

Sir Roy gave evidence against the parents during the neglect trial at Lewes Crown Court earlier this month and a trial last summer when a couple were accused of murdering three babies. They were acquitted of murder but convicted of neglect. They will be sentenced on Monday.

Sir Roy, a retired professor of paediatrics and child health at St James's University Hospital in Leeds, studied reports on the neglected children and concluded they were prone to infections, skin disease and stomach problems. But more serious were the problems experienced by the children at school.

One of the older girls had an abysmal school attendance record, experienced learning difficulties and was prone to inappropriate sexualised behaviour. Sir Roy said the children's lice infestations were of a degree he had not seen in 30 years of working in child health and had not been heard of since the 1950s. Overall, he said, he found gross neglect.

He said: "The degree of squalor, the failure to stimulate, failure to clean the children, failure to feed them and getting them to do normal things and skills is something that is very, very unusual in these modern times.

"It is a degree of neglect I have only met a handful of times in 30 years of paediatric work. It is one of the worst cases I have come across."

Sir Roy said he understood social services had a difficult job and he praised workers' courage in dealing with these children's aggressive parents. He said the agency "fell over backwards" to keep the children in the home. But common sense would have said the children should have been removed.

He said: "Yes, the children should have been removed quicker...the children suffered dreadfully." He said the prevailing ideology, that the children's natural parents are always best, is not always correct.

Sir Roy said he did not know enough about public inquiries for him to comment on the Argus campaign for one. But he felt the current ideology needed examining, and not just because of the Brighton case.

He said there were similar cases around the country where procedures were followed correctly but added "what seems the common sense view does not happen. It is something that should be looked at."

Social workers often show great courage in dealing with difficult families and they were not always backed by the organisation or the public. He agreed with concerns expressed in the Argus on Wednesday by child abuse consultant Brenda Robinson-Fell, saying: "The way the Children's Act legislation, of working together with parents, and the way this is interpreted on the ground, is not working sufficiently to protect the vulnerable."

The Brighton and Hove Area Child Protection Committee admits mistakes were made but insists it is already paying more attention to neglected children.

The committee said it is now placing less emphasis on the rights of un-cooperative parents.

That was one recommendation made in the Part 8 independent inquiry report, ordered by the committee. The Argus has obtained a copy of the report's summary which lists other mistakes.

It said repeated attempts to persuade the Brighton couple to change their ways led to "missed opportunities" and there were several times when the case could have been put before the courts. On violence, the report stated: "The climate of violence affected professional decision making. . . this increased the risks for children in the household."

Looking at record keeping, the report noted: "The report notes failures of record keeping across all agencies. The Case Review Group felt if a log of incidents in the family had been kept, this may have alerted workers to the cumulative nature of the neglect being experienced by the children."

Procedures were also taken into account in the report. It stated: "There were some examples of procedures not being followed. For example, no pre-birth case conference was held on two of the dead children which meant neither baby was on the Child Protection Register at the time of their death.

"Although this would not have prevented the deaths, it significantly influenced the type of post-mortem carried out and the extent of the coroner's investigations."

The report's recommendations, all adopted by the committee, included training for staff, focusing on neglect and its pernicious effect on children. This would include hospital doctors, housing and environmental health staff.

Other recommendations call for an overhaul of case conferences and the Child Protection Register, more training to deal with violent clients and quicker distribution of information between agencies where there are serious welfare concerns.

Hospital records should, in future, contain medical, nursing and social work notes so those seeing the patient have the fullest information.

MPs, church leaders, members of the public and some experts believe this is not enough and have backed the Argus campaign for a public inquiry to explain why the children were left so long in conditions described in court as "filthy and squalid".

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