UNION leaders have been writing to the British junior health minister, Mr Simon Burns, urging him to set up an immediate public inquiry into the death of six year old Rikki Neave. Rikki's mother, Ruth Neave (28), was on Wednesday cleared of strangling the boy in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in November 1994 but she was sent to jail for seven years for other child abuse offences.
The trial had heard a horrifying litany of cruelty and abuse of Rikki and Neave's other three children, all girls. Neave had once poured dishwashing liquid down Rikki's throat as a punishment when he was four, and when he was three he was locked out of the house in his pyjamas on a freezing December night.
Neave, a drug addict, had asked for Rikki to be taken into care. In a statement after yesterday's verdict, she said she had always proclaimed her innocence of his murder and said she hoped police would "redouble their efforts" to find the little boy's killer.
Unison, the British union which represents social workers involved in the case, wants the government to ask a senior judge to find out what went wrong.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Popplewell, described Neave as "inadequate" and "wholly unfit to be a mother", after hearing the prosecution outline a catalogue of cruelty and neglect.
Social service chiefs in Cambridgeshire have suspended two social workers involved with Neave when she lived at March, Cambridgeshire, before moving to Peterborough. The council has also commissioned the Bridge Child Care Development Service to carry out an inquiry into its handling of the case. The service hopes to complete that report by the end of this month.
Unison's senior regional officer, Ms Joanne Kaye Smith, said scores of workers would have to be interviewed and she doubted the report would be completed in time. She called on the Department of Health to start afresh and launch a full public inquiry.
"Let's just start from scratch and find out what exactly happened here. The government should appoint a senior judicial figure with the authority and knowledge to carry out a complete and open investigation and provide department backing," Ms Kaye Smith said.
Rikki's family have already called for such an inquiry and for their sake more than anyone's it should be set up as soon as possible."
"There were so many people involved in this over such a long period of time, they cannot all have been wrong. Clearly it was the system that failed."