3. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services: The publication of the Child Practice Review into the death of Logan Mwangi

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:18 pm on 29 November 2022.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 3:18, 29 November 2022

Logan Mwangi should be alive and well today, and being brought up in a loving, caring family and community. Ben Mwangi and his family should be looking after him. The teaching community of Tondu Primary School should be wrapping around him, as they did, as they tried to. It's right that the perpetrators of Logan Mwangi's brutal murder are behind bars for a long time, but it's right as well that we welcome the rigour of this report, which has not held back from pulling any punches, from going in forensically to what needs to be done. Much as the murder was shocking and horrifying for everybody who's read about this, equally, as you go through the report, the detail of the multiple failed opportunities to intervene at the right moment—and it's not one individual or one agency; it's multiple opportunities—and, as others have said, we've seen these opportunities missed before as well in other circumstances over many years. 

There are a series of recommendations, Minister, both at a local level for all of the agencies involved and for the multi-agency approach at a local level, but also significant ones at a national level. And I do welcome your commitment, Minister, to actually take actions now, to go forward and make the improvements right now, at a national level. That includes specific guidance to child protection practitioners about their duty—their duty—to inform and include all persons with parental responsibility in child protection assessments and processes; that Welsh Government commissions a pan-Wales review of approaches to undertaking child protection conferences—it's one of the things that's pulled out of this report, the failure of those multi-agency conferences to identify and take the right action—an annual national awareness campaign to raise public awareness on how to report safeguarding concerns. Because many people in this community say, 'How did we miss this?' But also, 'If it were to happen again, how should we raise the alarm about this happening?' So, Minister, I want to ask you how you'll take forward those recommendations at a local and national level, how they will be monitored, how this will be fed back here into Welsh Government, but also into the Senedd, so that we can give assurances to people. We can never say, 'This will never happen again'. I'd like to say that, but we know we can't. But what I do want to tell people is: we'll do our damnedest to do everything to make sure that this does not happen again.