Safeguarding Reviews

This page contains relevant information and guidance relating to case reviews published by the Brighton & Hove Safeguarding Children Partnership.

Responsibilities

At a national level, the responsibility for learning lessons from serious child safeguarding incidents lies with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and at a local level this responsibility lies with local safeguarding partners (local authorities, chief officers of police and the Integrated Care Board). In Brighton & Hove the Brighton & Hove Safeguarding Children Partnership lead on this work.

Safeguarding Children Partnerships are required, under Chapter 5 of the statutory guidance Working together to safeguard children 2023: statutory guidance (publishing.service.gov.uk) to undertake a rapid review for serious child safeguarding cases where:

• Abuse or neglect of a child is suspected and
• The child has died or been seriously harmed.

Rapid Reviews

The purpose of a rapid review is 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 should be taken next.

All agencies who have been involved with the subject child or family will be required to contribute to the rapid review. An initial scoping of agencies’ involvement will need to be completed and other relevant information will need to be rapidly gathered. To support this, agencies are asked to produce an Initial Scoping and Information Sharing form.
More detailed information will be sought if the rapid review concludes the case has the potential to identify national or local learning and a decision is made to recommend a Child Safeguarding Practice Review, or an alternative Learning Review.

Our Rapid Review Flowchart details the process for referring to the BHSCP for consideration for a case review. Although any agency can refer a case, all notifications to the Ofsted and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel must come from the Local Authority; you must liaise between your agency lead and the Children’s Services Safeguarding Manager before a referral is accepted. Once the Local Authority notifies Ofsted, this becomes a rapid review.