A year on from the Climbié Inquiry.

This article presents an overview of the article published in the Volume 13: 75 to 79, 2004 issue of Child Abuse Review. One article presents a detailed comparison of the Climbié and Colwell Inquiries highlights the social circumstances of the families depicted in these reports and notes the extent of change in the 30 years which separate them. It identifies the challenges encountered by practitioners who work with shifting family structures in the current context of cultural diversity. The paper also emphasizes the lack of trust both between agencies and in the inquiry process itself, both of which were apparent in the evidence to the Climbié Inquiry. An article by Goldthorpe provides a wide-ranging discussion of the legal implications of the Green Paper's key proposals for systems for flagging and tracking children. It identifies some of the barriers which impede the transfer of information between professionals and notes the law's lack of clarity in this area. The last two papers in this issue report the perspectives of parents and children. One article explores parents' views of child protection social work.The other paper describes a study of calls made by children to ChildLine Scotland over a period of a year; the research included more detailed qualitative analysis of calls made during a 2-week period.