Getting it right ...

... for children and young people ... is the title of the report by Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, commissioned in the wake of such tragic and high profile cases as that of Baby Peter. It aims to examine not the specific instances of failure, but the culture that fails more generally to prioritise the health and wellbeing of children and young people. Areas of concern the report highlights include significant regional variations in levels of service, trends in infant mortality and teenage pregnancy as compared with the rest of the EU, GPs' limited training in paediatrics and lack of co-ordination in the complex network of services. Amongst the report's recommendations is (no surprises here) that there should be some considerable effort towards joined-up thinking: top of the list, in an interesting piece of timing, is that "policy relating to the health and well-being of children and young people" should be the responsibility of a single government department. This is by no means the first time Sir Ian Kennedy has addressed these kinds of issues: he chaired the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry in the late 1990s.