Brandon father’s ‘shock’ at child protection report

BRANDON MUIR’S father John was “in shock” when he learned that a report on Dundee’s child protection services had highlighted so many major deficiencies, his family said yesterday.

John’s sister Dayna Garty called for the immediate resignation of Alan Baird, the city’s director of social work, and recently-appointed chairman of the committee overseeing child protection in the city.

She said they also feel for other children who have been let down by child protection services in Dundee.

“It’s all very well for them to say they’re sorry and it won’t happen again but they always wait until it’s too late,” she added. “They are all for giving people chances but that means it’s the kids who get hurt.”

Brandon was just 23 months old when he was killed by Robert Cunningham, his mother’s boyfriend.

The case prompted the Scottish Government’s children and early years minister Adam Ingram to bring forward the results of an inspection on Dundee’s child services.

That inspection, headed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE), found nine of the 19 quality indicators that they considered were either weak or unsatisfactory and it uncovered major problems in the identification of children at risk and the provision of a speedy response to their needs.

Although Brandon’s family has always been highly critical of the role they feel social services played in the toddler’s death, even they were shocked by the damning report, Dayna told The Courier.

“I definitely didn’t think it was going to come out as bad as it did,” she said.

“I was absolutely appalled when I read it in the paper. There were so many sectors which were unsatisfactory.

“I am totally disgusted that they have let so many kids down so badly, not just Brandon but everybody else—it’s not on and something has to be done about it.”

However, she insisted, a change in the service would require a change at the top.

“What we want to happen is for Alan Baird to step down.

“He says he’s the man who can take the service forward but the investigation said the leadership skills were weak.

“He is clearly not the man for the job.”

She was in no doubt her nephew would not have met his untimely and distressing end if social workers had made the right decisions about his care.

If they had allowed him to stay with the parents of his mother, Heather Boyd, he would “definitely” still be alive, she said.

Veronica and Raymond Boyd had raised their concerns with social workers, but their pleas to be allowed to care for Brandon were ignored.

Nevertheless, council administration leader Councillor Ken Guild pledged support for Mr Baird and said there were no plans to seek resignations from members of the social work department, despite the terms of the report.

He said, “The report is not a report on Dundee City Council alone, it is a report on the child protection agency, which involves the council, the police and the local health board and other agencies. It is a report on the partnership.

“Alan is the right man to address the issues and responsibilities highlighted by the report and we are already working to improve the areas indicated in the report.”

Mr Guild said he was confident child protection services would see significant progress over the next year.

“The HMIE will carry out another full investigation in a year but we have also invited them back in four months for further progress reports to allow us to mark how we are improving,” he added.

Mr Baird has already acknowledged that there were gaps in Dundee’s child protection services and yesterday saidhis department would do everything it could to ensure improvements happened quickly and were significant.

At a press conference in Dundee yesterday he refused to comment on whether the failures highlighted in the report could have played a part in Brandon Muir’s death.

He said, “I’m not talking about Brandon Muir. It is a separate report—the results of which will come out in due course—I will be more than happy to talk about the specifics of that case then.”

An independent inquiry of the Brandon Muir case is being carried out by former Fife Chief Constable Peter Wilson and Mr Baird said he would not talk about the circumstances of the little boy’s death until it is concluded.