Research shows that a different approach to ‘learning’ and improved infrastructure could make child safeguarding reviews more useful.
Working together to safeguard children makes the purpose of a child safeguarding practice review clear:
The purpose of serious child safeguarding case reviews, at local and national level, is to identify improvements that can be made to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Learning is relevant locally but has a wider importance for all practitioners working with children and families and for the government and policymakers.
A new report published by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel explores how child safeguarding practice reviews are done, and what could make them most useful.
Findings include notable variability in capacity and capabilities across safeguarding partnerships, and structural and cultural differences between agencies. The impact of safeguarding reviews on outcomes is hard to capture in view of the complexity and the changing nature of multiagency systems and activity.
Learning is not a linear process, and is not simply the action plan produced at the end of a review. Learning occurs throughout the safeguarding review process, including from the time of an incident and notification.
The research emphasises a clear need for structures and organisations to adapt to the ‘messy reality’ of how change occurs in complex systems, and argues that improved infrastructure is needed to support safeguarding professionals and independent reviewers to deliver a ‘systems approach’.
The research found highly variable levels of confidence and expertise in considering issues of equity, diversity and inclusion within the review process; national and local leadership is key to improving this. Involving children, families and practitioners in the review process is also an area that needs to be strengthened, so that their expertise and experience informs learning and systems improvement. This requires a highly sensitive and thoughtful approach.
The interconnected and interdependent nature of systems means that change at local level to enhance the impact of reviews will require enabling structures at sub-regional and regional level, as well as nationally.
Improved infrastructure is needed to support local child safeguarding partnerships to learn from each other. The Panel have a key role to play in enabling a system-wide learning culture.
Implications and recommendations for change
The research by the Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews – Learning Support Project (CSPRP) suggests changes at local, regional and national levels.
This fascinating project invites us to reframe how we think and talk about ‘learning’ from safeguarding reviews. Learning is the act, not the output. And, crucially, learning is not something that happens only at practice level – it is needed at all levels of the system. This includes national Government and Panel, who play vital roles in creating the conditions in which learning happens. Investing in local and regional infrastructure would be an important step forwards in supporting local areas to learn from each other and improve the usefulness of reviews.
Dez Holmes, Director of Research in Practice
Next steps
The CSPRP Learning Support Project has identified key areas that are potentially transformative and should be tested. National Government should create and sustain a healthy system in which learning is valued, enabled and promoted and role modelling the change needed.
Recommended next steps include the Government working with the Panel to respond to the report recommendations and providing opportunities for national, regional and local stakeholders to come together to discuss progress on key themes.
Safeguarding Partnerships valued flexibility to target and align limited resources in areas where learning is most needed. Recommendations for implementation of the project include phase two to test a new approach to multiagency learning from reviews.
Webinar: Learning Support and Capability Project
Find out more about key findings and embedding learning from Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews.
The Child Safeguarding Practice Panel is hosting a webinar on Thursday 12 June at 12.00-13.00. The session will include key takeaways for safeguarding partners and partnership managers about approaches to embedding learning.
About the Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews – Learning Support Project
Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (LCSPRs) explore tragic incidents where children have died or been seriously harmed because of abuse or neglect. The Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews – Learning Support Project (CSPRP) aimed to better understand how safeguarding partners deliver LCSPRs.
Commissioned by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and led by Research in Practice with the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Vulnerability, Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP), the project has highlighted gaps in understanding about the process of conducting high quality reviews. It has built a detailed view of how to support Safeguarding Partnerships to conduct high-quality learning in response to serious incidents, continuously improve their practice and better protect children and young people from harm.
