By Lewis Bazley.

More new-born children should be taken into care stop irreparable damage from poor parenting, according to the boss of a children’s charity.

Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo’s, said there should be less emphasis on "fixing families that can’t be fixed" and greater efforts from social workers to take at risk children into care.

His remarks come after two young brothers from Doncaster admitted a brutal attack on two other boys, aged nine and 11.

The attackers were under the care of social services at the time and were also known to local police.

Mr Narey told the Observer: "We can’t keep trying to fix families that are completely broken. It sounds terrible, but I think we try too hard with birth parents.

"I have seen children sent back to homes that I certainly wouldn’t have sent them back to. I have been extremely surprised at decisions taken."

A former director general of the Prison Service, he added: "If you can take a baby very young and get them quickly into a permanent adoptive home, then we know that is where we have success.

"That’s a view that is seen as a heresy among social services, where the thinking is that if someone, a parent, has failed, they deserve another chance.

"If we really cared about the interests of the child, we would take children away as babies and put them into permanent adoptive families, where we know they will have the best possible outcome."

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