To the point...

This summer two reports will have popped up on childcare practitioners'

screens, both of them useful and creditable. However, both show how precarious the politics of child protection is, how charged this issue is, and how scared the government is of doing what must be done: making it mandatory to share information and intervene on behalf of a child at risk.

Childcare providers are happy with the favourable findings in the Ofsted Early Years: Firm Foundations report. But they should be ashamed that only 35 per cent of nurseries are rated 'good' on child protection.

After two decades of dramatic discoveries and re-discoveries of the dangers awaiting children at the hands of carers, what else do we need to know about the abuse that assails them in supposed sanctuaries? And what else do we need to know about the difficulties, not to say professional dangers, awaiting practitioners when they air their suspicions? How many more inquiries into an avoidable death of a child, before the majority, rather than the minority, have their knowledge rated 'good'?