Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) requires the Safeguarding Partners to identify serious child safeguarding cases and to make arrangements to commission and oversee reviews of those cases, where they consider it appropriate for a review to be undertaken.
Serious child safeguarding cases are those (under Section 16C(1) of the Children Act 2004, amended by the Children and Social Work Act 2017) where:
The Safeguarding Partners will commission a CSPR for those cases that meet the above criteria and where it is likely that learning will be identified that will enable improved practice.
The Safeguarding Assurance Partnership will work in conjunction with the CSPR Panel who will provide advice to local areas about individual cases and will be responsible for national reviews.
More information about CSPR processes can be found in Chapter 5 of Working Together 2023.
Working Together 2023 [external link]
Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews are anonymised and published for a minimum period of 12 months, replacing the previous Serious Case Reviews approach. Published CSPR reports can be found in the Published CSPRs & SCRs section below, along with Practitioner Learning Briefs which support the distribution of key learning points across the workforce.
Below is a list of published CSPRs and SCRs. By clicking on each link you can access the published report and related resources:
When a review is published, we are required to protect the identity of the child and their family. To do so, we will often refer to a child by initials (not their real ones) or another name. We will also remove or alter any references to the local area in which they live and may change or omit other identifying details. Wherever possible, we will check with family members about what they are happy to be included.
Working Together 2018 changed the statutory framework for reviews, including a change of name from SCR to CSPR. As a result, all reviews started since September 2019 are CSPRs. In practice, CSPRs tend to be shorter with less detail about what happened and additional focus around the safeguarding practice and what can be learned from the particular circumstances.
CSPRs are written by an Independent Reviewer who will be an experienced safeguarding professional with no connection to the area. They will be supported by a panel of senior managers from the agencies involved with the child and their family. The statutory safeguarding partners of the Police, Local Authority and Clinical Commissioning Group will always be panel members, even where there has been little or no involvement in the case.
Reviews will remain available on the CSAP website for one year from the date of publication, although related Practitioner Briefings may be made available for a longer period to ensure that learning is shared. Older reviews can be accessed on request or through the NSPCC repository which is linked in the Published Reviews page of this section.
The review process itself typically takes around six months to complete although sometimes this may take longer if it is not possible to speak to the family or practitioners due to ongoing criminal or other legal processes. When this happens, we will endeavour to share and act on learning that has already been identified.
Working Together 2018 sets out the criteria in which a CSPR should be commissioned. The decision on whether a review should be conducted is made by a panel of senior managers from the three safeguarding partners for the area in which the incident occurred.
The CSPR panel will collate and review information about each agency’s involvement with the child and their family during an agreed timeframe. From this information, they will identify key lines of enquiry which they want to explore further and will investigate how this should be done. Wherever possible, they will always try to speak to the family and practitioners as part of this process. Once the above steps have been completed, the Independent Reviewer will write an overview report which will be agreed by the panel and the safeguarding partners.
