text: BBC NEWS | UK | England | NSPCC 'delayed action' over Climbie
  Friday, 25 January, 2002, 12:47 GMT
  Charity's family centre described as a "shambles"
  The inquiry heard that staff had been preoccupied with organising a party.
  The BBC has been shown evidence that key information in confidential documents put before the inquiry by the charity had been changed.
  The NSPCC provided photocopies to the inquiry rather than originals and details in them had been changed, it said, to protect the identity of individual staff.
  The charity then told the inquiry that the originals were lost but later produced them after pressure from inquiry chairman Lord Laming.
  Lord Laming described these inconsistencies as of potentially "great and widespread concern".
  One of the barristers complained that it had reduced the inquiry to the level of amateur detective work.
  It was not the first time that the inquiry had heard allegations that files had been changed.
  Social worker Sylvia Henry, who had been assigned Victoria's case, told the inquiry that she contacted North Tottenham social services who told her the family had moved out of the borough, so the case was closed.
  Social services denied the conversation took place and the department was still seeing Victoria and her aunt in December 1999 - fully four months after she was referred to the NSPCC.
  Victoria died in February 2000 and the case was shown closed in NSPCC computer records on 15 March.
  Ms Henry admitted she could not remember exactly when the phone conversation had taken place nor had she dated the entry in Victoria's files.
  When a barrister at the inquiry put it to her that she had added the note about the phone call to social services after the girl's murder in "an effort to explain away the fact that you had done nothing with this referral for months and months and months?" she said: "No, I dispute that".
  The NSPCC says it held an internal investigation into the case and accepts that more appropriate action could have been taken.
  At the time of Victoria's referral, it says the centre, which has since closed, was facing "difficulties" and since her death, the charity has strengthened lines of responsibility and improved its record keeping system.
  But it denies documents were doctored.
  In a statement, the charity said: "Despite suggestions to the contrary, we have found no evidence of deception or falsification of NSPCC records."
  Alan Levy QC, an expert on child law who was involved in the "pin-down" inquiry into mistreatment of children in homes in Staffordshire, said an "extremely disturbing" picture was emerging of practices at the family centre.
  "If the inquiry is critical of the NSPCC, it has to take a very hard look at its organisation," he said.