The death this week of two little girls in a fire at the SOS Children's Village in St Andrew is a deep tragedy, which should be profoundly worrying to the head of the Child Development Agency (CDA), Ms. Alison Anderson, for reasons other than those she has publicly expressed.

Abigail, four, and Antoinette, five, died from smoke inhalation when fire gutted their dorm at the home. Other children, fortuitously, escaped serious injury.

Any such incident will, perforce, be traumatic for all the members of the SOS community and, as Ms. Anderson has suggested, will be particularly poignant at this time of the year. Christmas, after all, is a time of happiness and cheer, and Ms. Anderson said, the St. Andrew SOS Children Village will most likely now be a place without "the happiness and laugher that this season brings".

Inasmuch as we agree with Anderson, this newspaper believes that there are bigger issues here for which the society must demand, and to which it deserves, answers. These have to do with the state of management of children's homes and places of safety - overseen by Ms. Anderson's agency - in face of the Keating Report.

Indeed, it took persistence on the part of Kay Osbourne, prospective adopter, who had blown the whistle on rampant abuse at one home in 2002, to get former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to name retired public servant, Sadie Keating, to lead an inquiry into the state of children's homes. Keating found rampant physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

She made a raft of recommendations for the overhaul of the management and oversight of the homes and places of safety. All this, broadly, coincided with the advance of the CDA, which had recently been established.

In the three years since the Keating Report, there have been encouraging declarations from the CDA, and we sense that the agency, certainly its leader, has a clear grasp of what is necessary to ensure the welfare of children in care, and if Jamaica is to fulfil its obligations under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Children. But, as Ms. Anderson would probably remind us, no convention is necessary for us to do what is morally right.

Nonetheless, we are getting this queasy feeling that there may be a gap between intent and the practical implementation of programmes and policies. At the very least there seem to be issues that need some hands-on attention by the CDA.

Indeed, this week's fire at the SOS children village is demanding of vigorous investigation and public reporting, which tell us, among other things, about adequacy of the training of caregivers and their capacity to respond to emergencies, such as that at the home, on Monday. We should also be told about the design of the facility that houses children in state care.

This is a matter not only for the SOS village. For we are concerned, too, about the case of Kena Forrest, the 13-year-old girl reported to have committed suicide at the Glenhope Place of Safety, last December 29. In May, Joel Wong, two, died after ingesting prescription medicine. At Glenhope!

Last month, Greg Madorie died at the Bethlehem Children's Home, in Kingston, after a seizure, but there have been questions about his death.

Ms. Anderson clearly owes the public an accounting.