LEADING ARTICLE : Rooting out the abusers

We failed them as children, and we are failing them still. Over the past 25 years, hundreds of children entrusted to the care of the state have been raped and assaulted, bullied and abused by the adults appointed in loco parentis to care for them. The authorities who worked on our behalf to license and regulate these homes, to recruit and train the workers who staff them, failed in their duty to look and listen to the cries of children who endured terrible tortures.

Today, at least 10 police forces are investigating claims of abuse in children's homes. Yet even when abuse is uncovered we often fail the victims. Reports are censored, scandals covered up and survivors of abuse lack the support they need to cope. Worst of all, as our sister paper the Independent on Sunday made clear yesterday, we have not acted on the most important lessons from recent scandals.

The systematic violence against innocent children that emerges from these investigations is shocking. Many of these homes are run by the public authorities in name; in practice they are exploited by networks of paedophiles. More than 100 children were abused by Frank Beck in homes in Leicestershire between 1973 and 1986. Staffordshire's infamous "pin-down" regime led to the abuse of a further 150 children between 1983 and 1989. Add to that at least 100 children abused in Clwyd, North Wales, and 60 or more in Islington, north London. Sadly these could be just the tip of the iceberg. Cheshire police have begun the biggest inquiry ever into child abuse interviewing almost 2,000 former residents.

These last two inquiries, in Clwyd and Cheshire, must be published. We have an obligation to face up to the crimes committed against children by public servants. The chain of officials, professionals and politicians who failed to stop the abuse must be held to account. The councillors in North Wales who tried to shield the Clwyd report from public scrutiny were wrong. As they draft a new version for publication, they must not censor significant findings.

Most important, the Government and local authorities must implement the many lessons from these reports. If a GP deliberately made a patient ill, he would be struck off the medical register. A lawyer caught using professional knowledge to defraud her clients would not be allowed to practise again.

People who look after children - especially the vulnerable and disturbed children who are placed in care - have far more power than GPs or doctors. Yet they remain largely unregulated; abusers are still able to move from one position of trust to another, leaving a trail of distraught children behind them. The Government should establish a general social services council to act as a professional and disciplinary body for care workers - similar to those in medicine and the law. There are bound to be practical difficulties in determining how far to spread the professional net. For example, should foster parents be included alongside the managers of residential homes? But these are not insurmountable obstacles.

This is an urgent task. Vulnerable members of the community, whether they be children, the elderly, or the chronically sick, all depend on the honour and professionalism of care workers. As community care expands, the Government should make sure it is able to regulate and register care workers to ensure those in care are better protected. If we fail to act now, as Allan Levy argues on the facing page, we will be guilty of a gross dereliction of duty towards some of the most vulnerable members of our society.