A DUNFERMLINE councillor has called for lessons to be learned after the airing of a BBC documentary on three Fife child deaths, including Kelty tot Madison Horne.

The programme heard from key witnesses in the two-year-old’s death, as well as the murders of Liam Fee and Mikaeel Kular.

Madison was brutally murdered in her own home by Kevin Park, the former boyfriend of the toddler’s mother, while he was babysitting in April 2014.

Liberal Democrat councillor James Calder, who represents Dunfermline South, has vowed to push for answers when the council’s education and children’s services committee meets later this month.

“The documentary is of course difficult viewing for all in light of these awful events and it does raise a number of questions about social services in Fife,” he said.

“As a member of the education and children’s services committee it is so important that we learn the lessons from these deaths and seek to try and prevent this from happening again.

“There will be a report on approaches to learning within child protection at the next committee meeting.

“That will be an opportunity to look over what has happened and why maybe mistakes have been made and how we can learn from them to try and prevent these tragedies from happening again. I will look to push for answers.”

The programme also led former Dunfermline Central councillor Neale Hanvey to call for an independent review of the three deaths.

“The thing that frustrates me is everyone assumes it is a finger pointing exercise and an attack on social work but it is about communication and making sure children are looked after,” he told the Press.

“It needs to be an independent review to look at all the processes to make sure that effective resources are there to deliver a safe service.

“Three children have died in circumstances that may have been avoidable and may be avoidable in the future. It is not about finding someone to hang out to dry, it is about finding out what is the situation.

“We need to have a sober look at things because we have had an extremely extraordinary situation in Fife with children’s deaths and we have a responsibility to look into it.”

Chair of Fife Chief Officers’ Public Safety Group, Steve Grimmond, said safety of children was a top priority.

“Sadly we have experienced three significant case reviews in Fife over the past three years relating to a tragic child death,” he said. “The circumstances surrounding each of these cases has been very different and I’d like to reassure people that we have been working with partners locally and nationally over the past few years to make sure our child protection services are of the highest quality and that we are continually reviewing and improving our practices. Our services in Fife have recently been subject to a rigorous evaluation process carried out by the Care Inspectorate. This inspection evaluated our services very positively but we are not in any way complacent, and we are continuing with our efforts to further improve our services to make sure we provide the best support possible to children.

“We are continually improving our processes and regularly review the quality of services to families.”

Improvements put in place over the last three years include the recruitment of more social workers, health visitors and child protection staff as well as new processes to support joint working across all partners.