Local Safeguarding Practice Reviews
The purpose of a Local Safeguarding Child Practice Review (LSCPR) is for agencies and individuals to learn lessons to improve the way in which they work both individually and collectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. It is not an inquiry into how a child died or was seriously harmed, or into who is culpable. These are matters for coroners and criminal courts, respectively, to determine as appropriate.
The Children Act 2004 (as amended by the Children and Social Work Act 2017) places a duty on local authorities to notify serious incidents to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel holds the key responsibility for how the system learns from serious child safeguarding incidents at a national level. The National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel meets regularly to decide whether to commission national reviews of child safeguarding cases that are notified to the panel. The panel’s decisions are based on the possibility of identifying improvements from cases which it views as complex or of national importance. To find out more about the work of the panel and themes identified click here.
The Children Act 2004 states: 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 —
- the child dies or is seriously harmed in the local authority’s area, or
- while normally resident in the local authority’s area, the child dies or is seriously harmed outside England.
When a serious incident becomes known to the safeguarding partners, they must consider whether the case meets the criteria for a Local Safeguarding Practice Review, formally a Serious Case Review. They will need to determine whether a review is appropriate, taking into account that the overall purpose of a review is to identify improvements to practice.
For further information about Serious Case Reviews please see Chapter 4 of:
‘Working Together to Safeguard Children — 2018’
