HEALTH bosses have underlined the need to tighten up child protection in the wake of the Victoria Climbie scandal by highlighting recent failures in the region.

A survey of child protection reviews carried out by the Durham Area Child Protection Committee during the past five years makes grim reading.

The exercise found a catalogue of errors that led to the death and serious injury of a number of County Durham children.

It was decided to re-examine the records to see if any patterns emerged as part of efforts to improve child protection in the North-East.

The review was carried out by Harry Cronin, director of adult mental health at the County Durham and Darlington Priority Services mental health trust, and presented to a board meeting on Thursday.

Mr Cronin said: "The purpose of my report is to highlight a number of key themes that have come out from various reviews.

"More than anything else, I am trying to raise awareness."

The overview is part of efforts to respond to the Victoria Climbie case in London.

Eight-year-old Victoria was tortured to death by her carers over a period of months despite the fact that social workers, voluntary staff and the police knew she was at risk.

In his inquiry report, Lord Laming castigated the agencies responsible for her welfare for failing to co-operate.

As a result of the tragedy, there has been a major overhaul of child protection procedures.

Mr Cronin's report identified a number of themes including:

* Professionals failed to recognise the significance of bruising to a baby which led to one death and one baby re-injured.

l Officials failed to recognise the signs of physical abuse leading to one child being severely re-injured and their sibling being injured.

* Time and again, professionals failed to follow basic child protection procedures - one GP denied they knew of the existence of such procedures.

l Poor record-keeping in cases.

l Failure to communicate. In one case, this resulted in the wrong baby being taken to a paediatric ward by the police leaving the other baby at risk of further harm.

Mr Cronin stressed that new procedures had now been adopted throughout County Durham but he urged everyone to be vigilant.

A spokeswoman for Tees and North East Yorkshire Trust said: "We have looked again at all of our child protection arrangements. New information is going out to staff this week."