It is easy to pillory social workers after a child has died from parental neglect or abuse. Official inquiries conducted after such terrible events usually conclude that more alert, more coordinated or more intensive intervention could have checked the destructive flow of events. But questions are less often asked about the parents themselves, though it is they, not the social workers, who are the perpetrators of the crime in question. The explanation may lie in the parents’ own upbringing. They too may have been neglected – which sometimes includes neglect by the state itself. Taking a vulnerable child “into care” can often mean exile to a remote residential home with little supervision, and a high probability of sexual abuse or drug addiction. Sir Michael Wilsha