Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel: Annual Report 2023/24

Every day, thousands of professionals make exceedingly difficult decisions to help keep children safe.

The annual report from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel is about the intrinsically challenging work of finding out what is happening to children, of anticipating risks of harm and of knowing when decisive action is needed. This involves striking a fine balance between helping families and protecting children. In most instances, children receive the support, help and protection they need but sometimes children are seriously harmed, or worse, they die because of abuse or neglect. The report analyses 330 serious safeguarding incidents which occurred between 1st April 2023 and 31st March 2024, and 82 Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews considered by the Panel in this same period, to identify national patterns in practice. A briefing note for Child Protection practitioners is available here.

Three spotlight themes were selected to provide a focus for this year’s annual report:

• safeguarding children with mental health needs,
• safeguarding pre-school children with parents with mental health needs,
• and extrafamilial harm. 

Key findings

• The number of SINs and rapid reviews submitted to the Panel has decreased by 18% this year. This reflects the national picture around SIN submissions and is related mainly to a decrease in submissions for serious harm. Overall, there were 330 rapid reviews: 49% related to deaths, 48% related to serious harm and 3% other.
• There continues to be a fairly even split between boys and girls who are the focus of the reviews, but the harm type differs between the sexes. For example, there were more incidents of extrafamilial harm for boys than girls, while there were more incidents of sexual abuse and/or exploitation for girls than boys.
• This year there has been a slight shift in age groups. Whilst under 1s remain the largest age group, 16-to-17-year-olds now make up the second largest age group rather than 11-to-15-year-olds as in previous years.
• There remains the over-representation of Black children and children with a mixed/ multiple ethnic background within the reviews submitted and an under-representation of Asian children. We can also see distinct age variation within the ethnic groups.
• There continues to be a large number of reviews that do not report on the child’s characteristics such as gender, sexuality and disability.
• SUDI and suicide remain the most common likely cause of deaths while nonfatal intrafamilial assaults remain the most common likely cause of harm.
• A high proportion of children who are the focus of these reviews have come into contact with, or their families are known to, CSC before the incident.
• A quarter of children of secondary school age either had an education, health and care plan (EHC plan) in place or were being assessed for one.
• A fifth of the children were reported as having one or more mental health conditions, affecting older children more.
• There were substantial needs of the parents with half reported to have mental health conditions, two in five reported to have an addiction to or misusing alcohol and/or substances, and a quarter reported to have a disability.
• Neglect continues to be a key factor in the child’s life, as does domestic abuse and physical abuse. A fifth of children had previously experienced sexual abuse in their lives and a fifth had experienced emotional abuse.
• The most common learning and practice themes identified within the reviews were: lack of co-ordination or handover between services, lack of professional curiosity or failure to ask the second question, weak risk assessment and decision-making, issues about children’s experiences and voices not being heard and understood, and poor escalation of concerns.

Read the full report.