DfE to axe serious case review system in favour of national and local reviews
Ministers are to scrap the serious case review system used when children have suffered severe harm.
This step follows a review for the Department for Education by external expert Alan Wood of the role and functions of Local Safeguarding Children Boards.
In its response to him, the DfE said Wood had called for a fundamental change that would replace the present system with “a new national learning framework for inquiries into child deaths and cases where children have experienced serious harm”.
A new system of national and local reviews would be introduced to bring greater consistency to public reviews of child protection failures, improve their speed and quality and ensure they are proportionate to the case concerned.
Ministers will legislate to establish an independent national panel responsible for commissioning and publishing national reviews and for investigation of the most serious or complex cases where it considers these will result in learning at national level.
Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and their successors will carry out local reviews into cases likely to lead to local learning.
The What Works Centre for children’s social care will analyse and disseminate lessons from both local and national reviews, backed by £20m allocated to fund both the centre and the process of centralisation of serious case reviews.
Ministers also said they would reform LSCBs, which they described as “inflexible and too often ineffective”, characteristically with large meetings that too often failed to lead to any effective action.
A framework will be issued, with a new requirement on local authorities, the police and the National Health Service, to have “more robust and much clearer arrangements to promote effective joint working, in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children”.
There will also be an expectation placed on schools and other relevant agencies to co-operate with these arrangements.
Mark Smulian
