Jane Dodds reiterates call for review of Social Services

Today in the Senedd, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats Jane Dodds MS, who worked as a child protection social worker for over 25 years, has reiterated her calls for a full review of Social Services in Wales in the light of the release of the report into the murder of 5-year-old Logan Mwangi by Cwm Taf Morgannwg Safeguarding Board.

During a statement from the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services on the release of the report, Jane Dodds gave an emotional speech stating:

“Last Thursday Wales was in the national headlines for the wrong reasons. Because we had failed a little boy. Logan Mwangi, and let’s call him Logan Mwangi, because the report didn’t, it dehumanised him by calling him ‘child T’.

“Logan Mwangi moved from being a bubbly, smiley, laughing child who loved spider man to one who developed a stammer. In the 11 months in which social services knew about him, he suffered four occasions in which his life could have been saved.

“From August 2020, to the time when his arm was broken, bruises found all over him, sexual abuse, to the point where he died in July 2021 – he was on the child protection register for just 2.5 months, therefore I do not accept the explanation from the Welsh Government that a review of child protection processes is going to help us at all.

“I’m getting very emotional, throughout my career I’ve read lots of reviews like this and unfortunately they come up with the same things. But my questions to the Welsh Government are twofold:

1) If it is not time for child protection services I want us to know every single child in Wales has a chance of being protected which Logan didn’t, if not now when? Because I don’t want to be standing here in 6 or 12 months times talking about another child’s death because we haven’t had a review.

2) How can we as Senedd Members here know how well our local authorities are performing in child protection services because that is what we want to know the most.

“There has been no review into child protection social services so far, the Welsh Government has listed lots of other reviews, but none of these have focused on child protection services – that is why we need this review.”