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BABIES born to 'bad' parents should be removed from their families as soon as possible to stop them being damaged beyond repair, the boss of Barnardo's ~Jl,jd yesterday.

Martin Narey said the time had come to accept some inadequate parents and families 'can't be fixed'.

He added: 'It sounds terrible but I think we try too hard with birth parents.'

Mr Narey was speaking in the wake of last week's chilling court case of two young Doncaster brothers who pleaded guilty to a violent and prolonged attack on an ll-year-old boy and his nine-year-old nephew.

The brothers were brought up in a not­orious family where drink, drugs and crime were rife.

Mr Narey, chief executive of the children's charity, admit­ted his views were likely to'OO seen as 'illiberal heresy' .

However, he added: 'We can't keep trying to fix fam­ilies that are completely bro­ken. 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.'

The two brothers were under the care of social services at the time of their attack and a review is taking place.

Children's secretary Ed Balls said removing children from. their parents at birth should not be an instinctive first resort. 'The right thing to do is to say, "Can we sort out the problems in that family?'" he added.

Mr Balls said about 2,000 families were being assessed to try to try to help tackle problems with alco­hol, drugs, domestic abuse and truanting. And he said children were now being removed from inadequate parents earlier ­within the first year, rather than after three or four years, as in the past - if the action did not appear to be working.