Tameside SCB

Building on the learning from serious case reviews:A two-year analysis of child protection database notifications 2007-2009

This analysis is briefer than previous biennial reviews since it has been undertaken during a period of transition when new ways of carrying out national analysis to prompt better learning are being considered.

Some findings from the latest analysis:

• The characteristics of the children, and their families, are very similar to those. found in the earlier biennial reviews; there was, for example, a similar proportion of children with child protection plans, and a similar age range.
• Approximately half of all serious case reviews are in relation to babies under one year of age, underlining the importance of effective universal services provision for young children, for example health visitors and early-years services such as Sure Start Children‟s Centres.
• A quarter of the reviews concerned older young people who are likely to pose a risk to themselves and/or others, and whose needs are not always recognised, or met.
• Little difference was noted between those notifications for serious injury which became a serious case review and those which did not (based on the information available to the researchers).
• While more than three quarters of the children were killed or harmed at home, just over one in five incidents (21%) took place in a "community context‟. The incident that prompts a serious case review is not always preceded bypractice failings.

The authors note that the  analysis of the brief information contained in the child protection database notifications provides little context to each case and tends to lose the reality of the children‟s experiences and the human tragedy that underlines each of these serious case reviews. For this reason the research team have, additionally, carried out a  qualitative analysis about the children and young people who died or were seriously harmed not at home but at a community level.

for more information about the new SCR analysis documents from the DfE click here