Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018

The Department for Education has revised Working Together to Safeguard Children, which is a guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. 

The Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board (NCSCB) has issued a self-directed learning session to accompany the guidance to support professionals to understand their role in safeguarding children.

The guidance and the self-directed learning session can both be found here.

First Rapid Review following serious child safeguarding incident

In line with the new statutory guidance Working Together 2018, Nottingham City have completed their first Rapid Review. 

Rapid Reviews are required for all serious child safeguarding incidents that meet the criteria for notification to the independent national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.

Criteria: Where a local authority in England knows or suspects that a child has been abused or neglected, the local authority must notify the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel if –

(a) the child dies or is seriously harmed in the local authority’s area, or

(b) while normally resident in the local authority’s area, the child dies or is seriously harmed outside England.

Rapid Reviews must be completed within 15 days of notification, and submitted to the national panel. The purpose being to:

• gather the facts about the case, as far as they can be readily established at the time
• discuss whether there is any immediate action needed to ensure children’s safety and share any learning appropriately
• consider the potential for identifying improvements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children
• decide what steps they should take next, including whether or not to undertake a child safeguarding practice review  

Findings of the first Rapid Review in Nottingham

The review of the case demonstrated effective multi-agency working and information sharing by professionals.  However, there were some learning points that came out of the review, as described below:

• Critical importance of safe sleeping advice to ensure every sleep is a safe sleep for babies
• The importance of routinely inviting GPs to all case conferences, reviews and core groups
• Testing to be carried out when history demonstrates significant drug and alcohol use.  Workers should not rely on self-reporting by parents/carers even when their behaviour, presentation or general demeanour does not indicate any substance misuse. Testing should be seen in the context of providing parents with an opportunity to evidence their positive change, as well as potentially indicating any concerns.