Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews
Darlington Safeguarding Partnership is the key statutory mechanism for agreeing how relevant organisations in Darlington will co-operate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in its area. A key function is to undertake reviews of serious cases to understand the learning from serious child safeguarding incidents.
The purpose of a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review is to:
- Establish whether there are lessons to be learned from the case about the way in which local professionals and organisations work individually and together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children
- Identify clearly what those lessons are both within and between agencies, how they will be acted on, and what is expected to change as a result
- Improve intra and inter-agency working to ensure better safeguards and promote the welfare of children.
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 [PDF Document] sets out the statutory process to be followed.
Local process for child safeguarding practice reviews
The local process for undertaking a child safeguarding practice review is outlined in the Safeguarding Partnership's Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Serious Child Safeguarding Incident Procedure Revised October 2024 [PDF Document]
Notifiable (Serious) Incident Referral Form July 2023 [Word Document]
NSPCC - Child Safeguarding Practice Review Quality Markers [External Link]
Published Reviews
Statutory guidance Working Together 2023 states safeguarding partners must publish LCSPR's. Below are the published Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews undertaken by Darlington Safeguarding Partnership:
February 2025
Child J LCSPR Full Report [PDF Document]
Child J LCSPR Executive Summary [PDF Document]
November 2023
Family H LCSPR Full Report [PDF Document]
Family H Executive Summary [PDF Document]
7 minute briefing on findings of Family H review [PDF Document]
NSPCC National Repository for published Serious Case Reviews and Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews
You will find details and additional information on published LCSPR's & Serious Case Review's on the NSPCC website. The national case review repository launched in November 2013. A list of the full overview reports and executive summaries are added to the National Case Review Collection.
All published reviews can be searched on the NSPCC website via the NSPCC website National Case Review Collection: a repository of published reports | NSPCC Learning [external link]
Details of recently published case reviews can be accessed by this link - NSPCC recently published case reviews [external Link].
Learning from National Reviews & Reports
The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel have published a number of National Reviews, click on the links below to review full published report:
- Protecting children and responding to child sexual abuse within the family environment Report (November 2024)
- Safeguarding Children with Disabilities in residential settings Phase 2 Report (April 2023)
- Safeguarding Children with Disabilities in residential settings Phase 1 Report (October 2022)
- Child Protection in England - National Review into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson (May 2022)
- The Myth of Invisible Men - Safeguarding children under 1 year old from non-accidental injury (Sept 2021)
- Out of Routine - Sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) in families where the children are considered at risk of significant harm (July 2020)
- Complexity and Challenge: A triennial analysis of SCR's - Triennial SCR Report 2014 to 2017 DfE (March 2020)
- It was hard to Escape - Safeguarding Children at Risk from Criminal Exploitation (March 2020)
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Briefing Papers
- Bruising in non mobile infants (Briefing 1 Sept 2022)
- Multi-Agency Safeguarding and Domestic Abuse (Briefing 2 Sept 2022)
- Safeguarding children in Elective Home Education (Briefing 3 May 2024)
- 'It's silent': Race, racism and safeguarding children (Briefing 4 March 2025)
Annual Reports
- 2020 Annual Report – Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Annual Report 2020
- 2021 Annual Review of LCSPRs and rapid reviews – Annual Review of LCSPRs and rapid reviews March 2021
- 2021 Annual Report – Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel – annual report 2021
- 2022 Annual Report - Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel - annual report 2022-23