Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews
Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (formerly Serious Case Reviews) are reviews undertaken by LSCPs when a child dies or is seriously injured and abuse and neglect is known or suspected. It is a requirement in statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023).
Sutton LSCP has a statutory duty to have a learning and improvement framework, which helps all agencies work together in Sutton to look at situations involving children and families where there has been good or concerning practice. This helps us look at our safeguarding learning and systems.
How lessons are learned
Working Together to Safeguard Children sets out the need for professionals and organisations protecting children to reflect on the quality of their services and learn from their own practice and that of others.
Independent Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) investigations aim to:
- Look at what happened in cases and why; and
- Identify action to drive improvements in the prevention of death, serious injury or harm to children.
Sutton LSCP has a local learning and improvement framework. The framework supports regular case reviews (including LCSPRs) to identify useful insights into the way that organisations are working together to safeguard and protect the welfare of children.
Sutton's LSCP training programme ensures that practitioners within children's social care, health, early years services, schools, youth offending services, police, probation and other statutory and voluntary services have access to learning opportunities that address national and local learning from LCSPRs.
Sutton's LSCP Case Review Subgroup is overseeing that individual agencies implement the independent LCSPR author's recommendations about system and practice improvements. The LSCP Quality Assurance Subgroup oversees that the Section 11 duty is complied with and that audits are undertaken to assure the LSCP that learning from LCSPRs is having the intended impact. All Sutton LSCP's Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews are published on the NSPCC Case Reveiw Portal.
National Learning
The NSPCC has developed a national repository of case reviews that have been published in the UK. This is a resource to access and share learning on a local, regional and national level. You will find Sutton LCSPRs (and previous SCRs) and other reports here.
Learning for the future: final analysis of serious case reviews, 2017 to 2019
Research in Practice has developed further resources: