NSPCC position on the publication of Serious Case Reviews

The NSPCC's position on the publication of Serious Case Reviews is as follows:

The Society reviewed its position in November last year and this has been clear and unchanged since then.
Serious case reviews are critical in the national drive to improve child protection in England. When a child dies or is seriously harmed by abuse, serious case reviews are an important tool for all agencies involved to learn how they can protect children better.

The case for greater accountability within the child protection system is a compelling one. Studies have shown that most overview reports fail to provide enough information to achieve a clear understanding of the case and the incident which led to the child being harmed or killed. Some summaries have also been criticised as being poor quality and not reflecting the full serious case review report.

Summary reports must show clearly what agencies are doing to avoid future tragedies and by when. When there is no analytical examination and consideration of the child's history, his or her family, and the climate and capacity of pertinent agencies, then it is challenging to construct clear, concise and robust recommendations.

The public must be confident that any and all recommendations from serious case reviews will be acted on as soon as practical. The public has a right to know what went wrong and what local authorities and public services are doing to put things right.

We believe action must be taken now to restore public confidence in serious case reviews. We support the publication of high quality serious case review summaries which are comprehensive, transparent and accurate, including any errors or failings as well as any criminal or disciplinary proceedings underway.

However, we do not support the publication of full serious case reviews reports, as sensitive information must be kept confidential to protect vulnerable children.

We set out our position in November last year in response to the revision of Chapter 8 of Working Together. We are recommending two crucial reforms to improve accountability and scrutiny of SCRs:

- A formal quality check on the SCR summary undertaken at arms length by a body such as a neighbouring or Local Safeguarding Children's Board (LSCB); a local authority investigator or local authority designated officer. Their role would be to ensure that the summary was an accurate distillation of the full report noting any criminal proceedings that are in train. Crucially their assessment report would become a matter of public record.

- A 'compliance report' should be produced at twelve months following the publication of the SCR summary to assess if actions have been taken by agencies in response to the recommendations of the overview report. This compliance report should also be published in full and be publicly available.

In short, the serious case review summary should tell the same story as the full report, only more briefly. The public must be able to see what went wrong.

Ends

NSPCC Media office 020 7825 2514 Out of hours 07976 206 625