I HAVE to admit that I shudder when I hear a director of social services conceding that "we made mistakes" while showing no more emotion about the death of a child than if he were talking about the colour scheme in his office.

The horrific death of five-year-old Lauren Creed, battered to a pulp by her stepfather, left to die for 90 minutes before an ambulance was sent for, is just one more of the too familiar stories of children's lives being lost through almost incredible incompetence, amounting to criminal irresponsibility on the part of police and social workers.

The good neighbour, Sofiah Baker, 20, who went to the trouble of recording the child's words when she told her of how her dad "punched her in the belly" was treated as a time waster when she took the tape recording to the police, and to social services.

They would not listen.

While the tape recording lay untouched, Lauren was enduring her last night on this earth.

Sofiah Baker must feel like giving up - but my advice to her would be: Never stop being a caring neighbour, but next time you know a child is being ill treated, don't waste your time going to the police.

Don't waste your money phoning social services. Ring a newspaper office or TV studio. If the media had been contacted instead of those who are paid to protect the helpless, that tape would have been listened to, and something would have been done.

The NSPCC do their best, but it isn't always easy to contact one of their inspectors. Your newspaper office, however busy, will listen to what you have to say and when they contact social services and police, fear of bad publicity will sting them into action, if anything will.

RUTH BRAITHWAITE, Edmund Gennings Court, Chatburn, Clitheroe.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.