THE case of Baby P, a toddler tortured and killed by his supposed carers, shocked Britain after the conviction last year of his mother, her lover and a lodger. The grim tale now turns out to have a horrible coda. On May 1st verdicts were returned in the trial of the mother and her boyfriend for the rape of a two-year-old. The mother was acquitted of cruelty—the victim told police she had seen the rape, and failed to intervene. The boyfriend was convicted and may get a life sentence.

The case made legal history. The child, aged three at the time of the trial and cross-examined via video link, was the youngest ever to give evidence in a British court. Also unusual was the decision to use false names for the defendants, and to ban all reporting until after the verdict. The fear was that the defendants would not be tried fairly if the jury made the connection with Baby P—or Peter, as he can now be called after his father asked for him to be dignified with his name.

In reaction to public outrage at the failure of social services to protect Baby Peter, Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families, commissioned a review of child protection from Lord Laming, who had done a similar job after the murder in 2000 of Victoria Climbié by her guardians. On May 6th Mr Balls published his response to Lord Laming's findings.

Among the mostly sensible proposals were some intended to mitigate the consequences of that earlier review. It had concluded that failures of communication had been the main problem: Victoria had been seen by many professionals, including doctors and social workers, none of whom had realised that she was already an object of concern. But the electronic form Lord Laming's first review spawned, which must be filled in whenever a child is referred to social services, has turned out to be an obstacle, not an aid. The form, and the database on which cases are logged, are now to be trimmed. And directors of the sprawling new children's-services departments created for all those professionals intended to work together must, if they are inexperienced in child-protection work, find a deputy who knows all about it. (Most directors are ex-teachers.)

But for all the talk of cross-agency communication, the most egregious recent failings in child protection have been by social workers. Peter and Victoria were both on the “at risk” register and seen regularly. Separately, social services in Doncaster are being investigated after seven children on their register died in the space of three years. And on May 6th a leaked report from the UK Border Agency suggested that 77 children who had arrived unaccompanied from China had gone missing from a single care home since 2006. They are thought to be have been victims of child trafficking. Only four have been found, two working as prostitutes.

A revamp of social-work degree courses, more on-the-job training and an advertising campaign to lure qualified social workers back to the front-line: none of Mr Balls's plans is bad. But they will hardly resuscitate a profession in crisis. Each failing leads to further vilification: the Sun, a tabloid newspaper, campaigned to get everyone who had ever interacted with Baby Peter sacked. Nationally, 13% of child-protection posts are vacant; in Haringey, where both Victoria and Peter died, the figure is 35%. Average pay for social workers is £28,000 a year; for teachers, it is £34,000—and Mr Balls confirmed there are no plans to close the gap. A survey by Unison, a public-sector union, in January found that two-thirds of social workers were looking for other jobs.