Three years ago the then First Minister, Jack McConnell, offered a "sincere and full apology on behalf of the people of Scotland" to people who had been abused while children in care. It was the first step in setting up an inquiry into what had by then been acknowledged as widespread abuse of children in residential care. Yesterday that inquiry reported. Tom Shaw, a former chief inspector of education in Northern Ireland, looked at 45 years of residential childcare in Scotland from 1950 to 1995 and recommended both a national centre to provide specialist services for survivors of abuse, plus a database of the homes and the bodies which ran them, and a new task group to oversee the welfare of children in care. Both should be adopted.

As Mr Shaw acknowledges, the prime objective of the former residents who contributed to the review was to ensure that children in residential establishments in 2007 do not experience the kind of abuse which they managed to survive. They are the survivors, the stronger ones, but all of them mourn others, many of them siblings, who have lost the struggle against mental illness, alcoholism and abusive relationships.

It is important that a proper record of all the individuals who went through institutional care is kept and is accessible. A national centre will provide that, but it will also open this shameful chapter of social history to a scrutiny that is long overdue. Unless we examine previous wrongdoing and misguidedness - and understand the difference - we cannot move on. That is vital, because, important as it is to provide constructive help for those who suffered in the past, much of the value of this report lies in its recommendations for future practice.

The Children (Scotland) Act of 1995 brought in new systems. The task now is to fit the current regulations to our new understanding that children not only have needs, but also have rights. One of the most important is the right to be listened to. There are new arrangements for inspection and monitoring through the Care Commission, but we should remember that there were also visits from inspectors in the years when children were being unjustly punished, cruelly beaten, made to feel worthless and sexually abused. Recent incidents of abuse underline Mr Shaw's warning that the needs identified when legislation was framed in 1995 still exist.

He is right that the way to ensure the welfare and safety of "looked-after" children (who are, in fact, the collective responsibility of us all) is to develop a culture in residential childcare founded on children's rights. When the children involved are damaged, as almost all are, there is an enormous gulf between adopting that as a philosophy and carrying it out on a daily basis. It cannot be bridged unless his recommendations to raise the status of residential childcare and those who work in it are implemented. That cannot be done without employing more qualified people and providing more training; and that will require extra funding. Consideration might also be given to a role for the Children's Commissioner in providing advocacy for children in care.

The proposal of a task group, essentially to monitor the quality of residential childcare and ensure children can make complaints, should be adopted along with the requirement for it to report to the Scottish Parliament, rather than childcare officials. Scrutiny by MSPs would provide an opportunity to investigate whether the regulations were working and provide an extra lever to ensure that never again do our most vulnerable children suffer further damage compounded by a lack of public concern.