2019 Triennial Analysis of Serious Case Reviews Messages for Police Professionals

1. 2019 Triennial Analysis of Serious Case ReviewsMessages for Police Professionals

2. Workshop objectives • Review main learning from the report in four key areas: • Neglect and its relationship to poverty • Opportunities to intervene • Vulnerability of adolescents • Multi-agency working • Identify implications for the police and criminal justice system. • Support staff to develop their knowledge, skills and practice to keep children and young people safe. • See https://seriouscasereviews.rip.org.uk/ for further information.

3. Key themes • Findings based on: • Quantitative analysis of 368 SCRs notified to DfE 2014-2017 • Detailed analysis of 278 SCR reports that were available for review • Qualitative analysis of a sample of 63 SCR reports • Complexity and challenge: complexity of the lives of children and their families, and challenges faced by practitioners seeking to support them. • Service landscape: challenges of working with limited resources, high caseloads, high levels of staff turnover and fragmented services. • Poverty: the impact of poverty, which created additional complexity, stress and anxiety in families. • Child protection: once a child is known to be in need of protection the system generally works well.

4. Neglect and its relationship to poverty • Neglect featured in 75% of all SCRs examined. It is the most common category of abuse for children on child protection plans. • Poverty leads to additional complexity, stress and anxiety and can heighten the risk of neglect. • Most children living in poverty do not experience neglect. • However the co-existence of poverty and neglect can escalate adverse outcomes. • Pathways to serious harm through neglect include: • Severe deprivational neglect • Medical neglect • Accidents • Physical abuse • Suicides and self harm • Vulnerable adolescents harmed through (i) risk taking behaviour (ii) exploitation • Sudden unexplained death in infancy (SUDI)

5. Adverse family circumstances in cases of neglect Table 1: Parental and family adversity in SCRs where neglect was a feature (Rates are likely to be an underestimate as they depend on whether a factor was recorded in the SCR report; in some cases the question may not have been asked, in others the SCR author may not have felt the factor was relevant.)

6. Learning points • Links between domestic violence, substance misuse and poverty are complex and often inter-dependent. • Ensure adequate training for frontline staff on recognising and responding to signs of vulnerability. • Frontline officers need to be conscious of the intense shame and stigma experienced by people living in poverty and maintain humane practice to entering family homes. • To describe issues effectively, use clear, straightforward language that is respectful but does not dilute the severity of the circumstances. • Acknowledgement and understanding of cumulative harm and risk should be embedded in all responses.

7. Opportunities to intervene • Use professional curiosity in every interaction to recognise when action needs to be taken: • Understanding and responding to neglect is a partnership requirement and not just the responsibility of children’s social care. • The voice of the child/young person should inform effective responses, and lived experiences should be accurately reflected avoiding professional jargon. • Cultural beliefs and expectations can impact on the care and wellbeing of a child and should be considered and investigated respectfully. • Information from relatives, friends and communities can be invaluable in keeping children safe. • Adolescents may be considered to be ‘putting themselves at risk’ but this may be because they are vulnerable due to neglect.

8. Learning points • Reflective Supervision should be used to challenge unconscious bias and assumptions. • Discussing potential hypotheses and considering vulnerabilities, uncertainties and potential harms can reduce bias. • Be conscientious about recording actions. • Follow up any concerns raised by members of the community and triangulate this with other sources of evidence. • Understand the perspective of the child and speak to them on their own where possible.

9. Vulnerable adolescents • One in three SCRs involved children aged 11 and over. • Increased potential for extra-familial risk and harm during adolescence – virtual and local communities were a source of significant risk. • Most common causes of serious harm were (i) risk-taking/violent behaviour by the young person, and (ii) child sexual exploitation. • Young people were often not in school, going missing and seeking a sense of belonging outside their family. Threats outside home include: • Going missing • Criminal exploitation eg, moving drugs (county lines), violence, gangs, trafficking • Child sexual exploitation (CSE) • Harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) • Radicalisation • Social media and technology assisted harm

10. Complex and Contextual Safeguarding (Firmin et al, 2019) • Complex Safeguarding • This encompasses a range of safeguarding issues related to criminal activity involving vulnerable children or adolescents, where there is exploitation and/or a clear or implied safeguarding concern. • Includes child criminal exploitation, county lines, modern slavery including trafficking and child sexual exploitation (CSE). • Contextual Safeguarding • This is an approach to safeguarding children and young people which responds to their experience of harm outside the home – for example, online, in parks or at school. • It provides a framework for local areas to develop an approach that engages with the extra-familial dynamics of risk in adolescence.

11. Learning Points • Police training should cover Contextual and Complex Safeguarding and have knowledge of criminal activity hotspots in local areas. • It is important to recognise the relationship between adolescents’ prior experiences and their risk of harm. • Officers need to be alert to the fact that boys may find it difficult to disclose CSE. • Behaviours associated with criminal exploitation should be understood primarily as indications of vulnerability rather than criminality. There should be a therapeutic/safeguarding response as well as a criminal justice response. • There needs to be: • clear internal safeguarding processes that are understood by all staff • adequate training for staff to recognise and respond to vulnerability of all types

12. Multi-agency working • Police investigations sometimes ‘run in parallel’ with other agencies’ efforts to protect children, rather than being seen as an integral part of the process. • In cases of neglect police often take a ‘back seat role’ if there are no immediate risks to the child or there was no criminal investigation. • Silo working is an ongoing problem within and between agencies, especially for the police. • The move away from specialist child protection investigation teams has had a knock on effect on safeguarding work.

13. Learning points • Police officers should be involved at all stages of an investigation (including strategy discussions) and have a solid understanding of their role in sharing information. • Low-level concerns should be recorded as these help to build a picture of the child's life. • Information on previous relationships or offences in other force areas should be checked and shared with partner agencies. • Achieving Best Evidence interviews should be a joint agency activity. • Partnership working should be collaborative and open to ‘professional challenge’. • Senior leaders need to: • ensure staff have the capacity, skills and confidence to be active participants in strategy discussions • review their team structures and operations to ensure safeguarding and investigative processes are child-focused, clear and unambiguous

14. Reflective questions – frontline staff • Do I understand my role and the powers available to me to safeguard children? • Do I understand pathways for multi-agency working, including how to escalate concerns about practice or decision making in my area? • Am I confident in understanding how to share information in a language that describes the risks, vulnerability and wider lived experiences of a child?

15. Reflective questions – senior leaders • Is my workforce equipped and resourced to respond effectively to safeguarding concerns? • Is my force/department fostering a culture of learning and innovation e.g. learning from poor practice, using technological advances to improve safeguarding?

16. Further reading • Brandon M, Sidebotham P, et al (2019) Complexity and Challenge: A Triennial Review of Serious Case Reviews 2014-2017. London: Department for Education. • Allnock D (2019) Learning from reviews of death or serious injury as a result of child abuse or neglect. A briefing paper. Norfolk: National Police Chiefs Council, Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme. • College of Policing. ‘Authorised Professional Practice, Major Investigation and Public Protection’. • Firmin C, Horan J, Holmes D and Hopper G (2019) Safeguarding during adolescence – the relationship between Contextual Safeguarding, Complex Safeguarding and Transitional Safeguarding. Dartington: Research in Practice.

17. Contact details www.rip.org.uk ask@rip.org.uk @researchIP