Care Leavers' Association

Over the weekend, Martin Narey, Chief Executive at Barnardo's made a statement in which he called for more children to be taken into care as babies from "families who can't be fixed" in order to prevent them from being harmed.

Narey, who is a former director general of the Prison Service, made the comments in a response to last week's court case involving two young brothers from Doncaster who viciously attacked an 11-year-old boy and his nine-year-old nephew. Read more in the Guardian.

However, the Government rejected Mr Narey's calls. Ed Balls claimed that taking babies into care should not be a first resort. He said:  "I don't think the right thing to do in these cases is immediately to put children into care." Read more on the BBC website. He said that the first thing to consider would be whether the problems within the family could be sorted out.

Do you agree with Martin Narey, or do you think that social workers should work with families where children may be at risk in order to try to resolve the problems and ensure that they can stay safely in their family homes?

That is the hot question in the media and in the social care blogging sphere this week.

The question centres around the case of Lynda Barnes, a child protection social worker from Bath and North East Somerset Council, who was convicted of conspiring to murder her husband.

Barnes' former conviction became public recently when her professional practice and conduct was severely criticised during a child protection case. In 1995, Barnes met with a hitman and offered him a sum of money to murder her husband. She pleaded guilty, was given a two year suspended sentence and was subsequently sacked by Avon Council.

In 2005, she was hired by Bath and North East Somerset Council and went on to be promoted to team leader. When applying for registration as a social worker, Barnes did admit the conviction, although the judge found that she gave both the GSCC and Bath and NE Somerset Council a 'sanitised' version of events. She also gave them permission to read her criminal file, which neither did.

Read the full story in The Times online.

So, should a conviction for conspiracy to commit murder prevent someone from being a social worker?