WE can only begin to imagine the agony felt by the family of toddler Joshua Massey-Hodgkinson.

Most parents have left a youngster in the care of a childminder at some time or another and that's why what happened to Joshua is so important.

Childminding is necessarily a regulated occupation. If someone is registered with Ofsted people are entitled to believe they have some degree of protection because a vetting process has taken place.

What they would not expect is that a registered childminder is a self-confessed binge drinker nor that she was permitted to look after youngsters only during the day but not at night.

How could they know that when, for example, Ofsted's own website makes no distinction between approval for day and night care?

Wendy Barlow will have to live with the knowledge that Joshua drowned at her house while she was, as a judge said, "befuddled by alcohol" and doing something she was not registered to do.

But many more will justifiably question the system under which this deadly chain of events was able to happen.

And they will insist that the report of the inquiry being carried out by the Lancashire Area Child Protection Committee is made public so that all parents have all the information they need to stop similar tragedies in the future.