Source: Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board published on this site Tuesday 27th August 2013 by Jill Powell
Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board has today published a serious case review into abuse at Little Stars Nursery in 2010. Paul Wilson, an assistant at the nursery, was jailed for 13½ in July 2011 after pleading guilty to raping a child in the nursery. He also admitted 47 counts of grooming of teenage girls over the internet.
The Review found that it was known by the nursery, Ofsted and the local authority that Wilson had a ‘special relationship’ with the child which should have raised the alarm and been examined in more detail.
Jane Held, Independent Chair of the multi-agency Birmingham Safeguarding Children Board said: “Responsibility for this awful abuse must, and does, lie with the perpetrator. He was clever, duplicitous and manipulative and took advantage of weaknesses in the system.
Parents should be able to trust the people they leave their children with to ensure that children are properly protected. In this case there were unfortunately a number of weaknesses in the way that nursery was run and a number of opportunities to intervene earlier and prevent the continuation of abuse.”
She added that “There are three key lessons arising from this review. One is that those in charge of settings caring for children must ensure there are strong clear practices and systems to minimise the risk of abuse .The second is to listen to and ask about children’s experiences directly with them rather than just speak to adults. The third, and potentially the most important, is that safeguarding children is a job for everyone, and every single person who looks after or cares for children needs to know how to recognise when something is not right and what to do about it, and have confidence they will get the right response when they do act.“
To read the full serious case review click http://www.lscbbirmingham.org.uk/images/stories/downloads/executive-summaries/Published_Overview_Report.pdf