Hampshire Safeguarding Children Partnership’s (HSCP) is delighted to announce the launch of its Safeguarding Practice Week for multi-agency professionals working with children and families in the Hampshire. Taking place from 24-28 June 2024, the focus of this week is on Learning from Reviews.
Developed by HSCP, this initiative aims to address the need for a different approach to learning from reviews to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in Hampshire.
The Safeguarding Practice Week will highlight the recurring themes or ‘perennial practice challenges’ from both national and local reviews (known as Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews). Through the launch of a new Learning from Reviews Toolkit and Safeguarding Theme Overview Pack, multi-agency practitioners will be provided with the tools, training and resources to apply key learning to their everyday practice.
| Day | Perennial practice challenge |
| Monday | Introducing:
· Learning from Reviews Toolkit · Safeguarding Theme Overview Pack |
| Tuesday | · Information exchange
· Risk & critical thinking |
| Wednesday | · Family engagement
· Honest conversations · Professional curiosity |
| Thursday | · Resolution
· Disproportionality · Supervision |
| Friday | · Myth-busting
· Agency responsibilities |
Safeguarding children is complex and reliant on a wide range of services working together. Ongoing development of knowledge, skills, and confidence is essential for multi-agency professionals working with children and families.
One key area for strengthening multi-agency practice lies in learning from reviews.
Reviews provide valuable, in-depth insights into serious safeguarding cases, where a child has been seriously harmed or died and abuse or neglect is known or suspected. The reviews provide ‘a window on the system’ of multi-agency safeguarding practice.
Reviews encompass a variety of approaches and can include multi-agency audits of safeguarding practice of individual children, local learning events, child safeguarding practice reviews and rapid reviews following serious child safeguarding cases. Regardless of the methodology, their common purpose remains the same: to identify how to achieve the best outcomes for children by preventing or reducing the risk of recurrence of similar incidents.
Both national and local reviews frequently highlight recurring themes, often referred to as ‘perennial’ challenges. These recurring issues cut across case reviews and auditing and include themes related, but not limited, to parent-oriented issues (such as domestic abuse, mental health and substance misuse), young carers, family engagement, information sharing/ exchange and professional curiosity.
Recognising, understanding and responding to these perennial challenges is essential for effective multi-agency safeguarding practice.
Understanding perennial challenges is only the first step. The true impact comes from applying this learning to practice. Multi-agency practitioners must actively integrate lessons learned and the tools to support them into their daily practice. To address this, HSCP are pleased to launch the Learning from Reviews Toolkit and accompanying Safeguarding Theme Overview Pack. These resources provide practitioners with the information, training and tools to effectively understand and apply learning from reviews to safeguarding children in Hampshire.