Serious case review evaluations: April 2007 onwards

23 Oct 2012 Ofsted

Ref: 080278

Serious case reviews are local enquiries into the death or serious injury of a child where abuse or neglect is known or suspected to be a factor. They are carried out by Local Safeguarding Children Boards so that lessons can be learned. The responsibility for evaluating serious case reviews was transferred to Ofsted from the Commission for Social Care Inspection in April 2007.

Ofsted is responsible for evaluating serious case reviews in line with the requirements of Working Together to Safeguard Children. The evaluation of a serious case review is not an evaluation of the quality of the professional practice, or the quality of service delivery, in relation to the incident under review. Nor is it about allocating blame. It is an evaluation of the degree to which the review has succeeded in identifying lessons to be learned form the events and the analysis, and the action that needs to be taken to improve the protection of children in the future.

The evaluation list shows the serious case reviews carried out by Local Safeguarding Children Boards that Ofsted has evaluated.

We publish the outcome of evaluations on a quarterly basis.

We published the latest list on 18 January 2012.

Evaluating serious case reviews

Parliamentary-Under Secretary of State Tim Loughton MP has announced, in answer to a parliamentary question, that new streamlined arrangements for the evaluation by Ofsted of serious case reviews will be introduced from 3 January 2012. These will be transitional arrangements, pending the implementation of the recommendation of the Munro Review (May 2011) that in due course Ofsted evaluation of serious case reviews should end altogether.

John Goldup, National Director, Development and Strategy, has written to Directors of Children’s Services and Chairs of Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards to set out in more detail how the new arrangements will operate. The letter is available below.

This page also contains data on child deaths provided in response to a FOI request. These figures are not official statistics, they are data from a data request published in the interests of transparency.

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