When moral pieties get in the way of doing the right thing, children suffer | Sonia Sodha

The 1980s child abuse scandal reminds us that now, as then, being on the side of the angels' has to be backed with action

A council's most important job is not emptying the bins or filling in potholes, the stuff most people see day to day. It has by far and away one of the most important jobs anyone could have: to be a parent. Local authorities, between them, have parental responsibility for more than 100,000 children in care in the UK. These are some of society's most vulnerable children, removed from their parents' care because they have experienced or are at risk of abuse and neglect. Anybody disinclined to take that responsibility seriously should come nowhere near elected office or senior management at a local council.

How, then, did Lambeth council in south London get itself into a position where members and senior managers, at best, looked the other way while children in its care were subject to the most depraved sexual, physical and emotional abuse and, at worst, were complicit? The report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) into Lambeth, published last week, sets out the horrific scale and nature of what went on over several decades from the 1960s. More than 705 former residents of Lambeth children's homes have come forward with complaints of sexual abuse; the inquiry says the true scale will be significantly higher.