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The government will create a national agency to provide oversight of child protection practice in England, the safeguarding minister has revealed.

The Child Protection Authority (CPA) will provide “national leadership and learning on child protection and safeguarding”, with work to establish it beginning this year, Jess Phillips told the House of Commons this week.

Creating a CPA in each of England and Wales was one of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) final report, published in 2022.

Inquiry’s proposal for Child Protection Authority

IICSA said these should be independent statutory bodies that would be repositories of expertise on child protection and tasked with improving practice, advising governments on policy and, where necessary, inspecting institutions.

The inquiry said they would fill gaps in current arrangements by inspecting non-statutory or unregulated organisations where children spend time and multi-agency child protection arrangements.

However, the then Conservative government rejected the proposal – in relation to England – in 2023, on the grounds that many of its proposed functions were already being carried out by existing bodies. These included the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (“the national panel”), which reviews learning from serious child protection cases.

The Welsh Government has said that the country’s existing National Independent Safeguarding Board fulfilled IICSA’s proposed remit for a CPA.

Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel remit to be expanded

In her statement to the Commons, Phillips said the CPA would initially be set up within the national panel, with work starting immediately to expand the panel’s role.

This would involve giving the panel “the resources it needs to increase its analytical capacity and its capability to develop high-quality material for practitioners”, said an accompanying Home Office report on the government’s approach to IICSA’s recommendations.

Later this year, the government will consult on the make-up and remit of the CPA, including any aspects that would require legislation. The Home Office report did not commit itself to retaining the CPA within the national panel in future or setting it up as a separate body, meaning this may be consulted upon.

Phillips told the Commons that the consultation would “take time” and not involve “upending an entire system”.

Authority ‘must help make difference to children’

The panel welcomed the plan for it to “help create the foundations for a new Child Protection Authority across England” and said it was committed to working closely with the government on this.

Its chair, Annie Hudson, said: “The panel’s oversight and work to support learning from serious incidents where children have died or been seriously harmed, inside and outside their families, provides important insight about how children can be better safeguarded and protected from all forms of abuse.

“It is important that the powers and remit of a new Child Protection Authority will help make a difference to children.”

“We are committed to working closely with government and other stakeholders as plans develop and the detailed roadmap is progressed,” she added. “It is vital that all those who work with children participate in the forthcoming consultation so together we develop a child protection system that keeps children’s needs at the heart of all decision making.”

No inspection function for Child Protection Authority

While the department said that IICSA’s recommendations would be “core to the development of the consultation”, it ruled out giving the CPA any role in inspection.

This was to ensure that agencies were “transparent about failings” with the CPA to enable it to “provide expert advice on how to improve and change”, an approach that could be impeded by giving it inspection powers.

The Home Office also highlighted findings from IICSA and other organisations that inspectorates had “failed to identify abuse taking place in institutions”.

Joint inspection on CSA within families

In relation to inspection, it said it Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the police and probation inspectorates would carry out a joint targeted area inspection (JTAI) of agencies’ response to child sexual abuse in family settings in autumn 2025.

The Home Office also pledged to create a cross-government working group to look at improving single and joint inspection of child protection and post-inspection accountability arrangements, to ensure areas acted on recommendations.

IICSA also recommended that the government appoint a cabinet-level minister for children to provide a sharper focus across government on
issues affecting them.

The Home Office said the government would not be implementing this specific recommendation, with the education secretary – currently, Bridget Phillipson – remaining the cabinet minister responsible for children’s issues.

Cross-government child protection board

However, it said that a “keeping children safe” ministerial board, including all ministers with roles affecting children, would be set up to support cross-government working on safeguarding. Its role would include:

• Monitoring delivery of the CPA and taking advice from it, on government policy on child protection, once it had been established.
• Tracking progress on the implementation of national panel reports, including its 2024 review of intrafamilial child sexual abuse (CSA). This found that children were too often ignored or disbelieved by practitioners, who lacked the knowledge, skills and confidence to combat this form of abuse.
• Overseeing the work to strengthen multi-agency child protection inspection.

Plan for mandatory reporting of CSA

The government has already pledged to implement one of IICSA’s key recommendations, the introduction of mandatory reporting of CSA by those in position of trust over children where they have received a disclosure of, or witnessed, abuse.

This will be introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill. However, the government has departed from the inquiry’s recommendations in two key respects:

• There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report CSA in line with the duty. Instead, such a failure would constitute “relevant conduct” that would be liable to have the person being included on the Disclosure and Barring Service’s list of people barred from working with children.
• There will be no requirement to report CSA based on the reporter witnessing recognised signs of the abuse, such as sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse, such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Specialist therapy for victims and survivors

IICSA also recommended that victims and survivors of CSA be given a guarantee of specialist therapeutic support.

In relation to this, the Home Office said it would “work on ambitious proposals for improving the therapeutic support offer”, setting out details in the forthcoming spending review, which will set government expenditure limits from 2026-29.

It also pledged to double annual funding this year for national services supporting adult survivors of CSA.

More than half of social workers feel unprepared to tackle the impact of social media on children, a Community Care poll has found.

This follows the release of Netflix drama Adolescence in March, which sparked a national debate in the UK around the growing influence of online content on children – particularly young boys.

The four-episode series follows the aftermath of a 13-year-old boy being accused of murdering a girl from his school and explores children’s exposure to misogyny and incel (involuntarily celibate) culture online.

‘An emerging and growing problem’ – Starmer

In the wake of the show’s success, prime minister Keir Starmer described the online radicalisation of boys as “an emerging and growing problem” and backed screenings of Adolescence in secondary schools.

However, he cautioned that there was not a “lever” he could pull to solve the problem, adding: “Only by listening and learning from the experiences of young people and charities can we tackle the issues this groundbreaking show raises.”

With social workers often supporting children who spend long periods online, how equipped do they feel to tackle the influence of online culture?

A Community Care poll with 640 responses found that one-third of practitioners didn’t feel “at all” equipped to address the influence of social media on children, while 25% said they were only “a little” equipped.

Only 15% stated they were “very” well-equipped, and 27% said they were “somewhat” so.

If you’d like to share or write about your take on Adolescence and working with children who spend long periods online, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Social workers believe racial bias greatly affects child protection practice, a poll has found.

This follows a recent report by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel on the impact of race, ethnicity and culture on cases where children have died or suffered serious harm.

The case reviews studied, which involved mixed-heritage, black and Asian children, were “silent” about the presence of racial bias in professionals’ decision making and on the role of racism in services’ responses to families.

The panel found that children’s race and ethnicity were often not recognised, appropriately explored or understood by practitioners, resulting in them not having a full understanding of children’s lived experience and the vulnerabilities they faced.

Only 7% said racial bias affected child protection practice “not at all”, while 5% believed there was “little” influence.

The national panel’s report is the latest in a series of studies to highlight issues with the way the social care system responds to children and families from black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.

Practitioners did not sufficiently consider children’s needs in relation to their race, ethnicity and culture in responding to child sexual abuse, found a review last year carried out for the panel by the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, a 2023 Nuffield Family Justice Observatory study identified significant ethnic inequalities in the use and timing of care proceedings.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report child sexual abuse (CSA) under the government’s plan to introduce mandatory reporting, despite home secretary Yvette Cooper appearing to have said previously that there would be.

Instead, the government has said that those under a duty to report “may be referred to their professional regulator (where applicable) or the Disclosure and Barring Service [DBS], who will consider their suitability to continue working in regulated activity with children”.

It will also introduce an offence of of preventing or deterring a person from complying with their duty to report CSA.

The proposals, included in the Crime and Policing Bill, are broadly similar to those put forward by the previous Conservative government before it lost power last year.

Response to CSA inquiry recommendation

Both sets of proposals are responses to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) recommendation to require anyone carrying out a regulated activity – those which a person barred by the DBS are prohibited from doing – or in a position of trust with children to report cases of CSA.

However, both the Conservative and Labour proposals differ from IICSA’s in two key respects:

• There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had witnessed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it to them, which the inquiry found or implied were relatively rare.
• There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. In relation to this, IICSA said that a failure by those in a position of trust over children to pass on information about CSA to the police or local authorities was “inexcusable” and “the sanction for such an omission should be commensurate”.

Cooper comments interpreted as heralding criminal sanction

The absence of an offence comes despite Cooper having said, on announcing that Labour would take forward mandatory reporting, that there would be “professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse”.

This was taken as meaning that failing to report CSA, if you were under a duty to do so, would be criminalised.

For example, the House of Commons Library, which provides neutral briefings on parliamentary issues, drew a contrast between the Conservative and Labour approaches in a report on the issue, published in January this year.

“On 6 January 2025, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the government would “make it mandatory to report abuse” through measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, to be introduced to Parliament in the spring,” it said.

“She added that failing to report child sexual abuse would be “an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions”. This is different from the previous government’s proposals for mandatory reporting, under which failing to report would not have been an offence.”

No offence of failing to report CSA

However, when the Crime and Policing Bill was published at the end of February, there was no such offence included.

The bill is now being scrutinised by a committee of MPs, who considered the issue last week, when Labour MP Matt Bishop raised the absence of an offence with crime and policing minister Diana Johnson.

In response, Johnson pointed to the fact that those subject to the duty would include volunteers and taxi drivers taking children to school, as well as professionals such as social workers and teachers.

She said IICSA’s recommendations “were not about criminalising those individuals”, which the government did not believe would be “appropriate”.

“What we were very clear about – again, I think that [IICSA] made this point – is that if anybody tries to interfere with or stop that reporting, that is the criminal offence,” she added. “That is the bit that we think is important to have in the bill.”

Pressure group Mandate Now was heavily critical of both the absence of a criminal sanction and the fact that the duty to report applied only to witnessed or disclosed abuse, given research indicating such cases were rare.

‘Never acceptable to turn blind eye to abuse’

For the NSPCC, head of policy Anna Edmundson said: “It is never acceptable for adults to turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse and essential they act immediately if they have any concerns that children or young people may be experiencing it.”

She said that the “responsibility to report must be underpinned by adequate training”, so professionals and volunteers can “spot the potential signs and indicators of child sexual abuse and respond with confidence”.

“There should be consequences for failing to act in line with clearly established duties to report – including a range of professional and other disciplinary sanctions,” she added.

Legislation ‘a step in the right direction’

Lucy Duckworth, policy advisor at The Survivors Trust, said the legislation, though not going as far as the charity would have liked, was a “fantastic step in the right direction”, in the context of a longstanding campaign to introduce mandatory reporting.

She said criminal sanctions for failure to report would not be effective because “people wouldn’t believe it would happen”.

“The criminal justice system is not fit for purpose,” she added. “What people are concerned about is their reputations. If that position of trust is threatened if people fail to report and you could lose your job, [that will have an impact].”

Duckworth said that though the trust – a membership body for specialist rape and sexual abuse services – would have liked to have seen a duty to report CSA when there were recognised signs of abuse, the Home Office’s view was that “we don’t have a culture where we understand what indicators of abuse look like”.

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A “sea change” is needed in practitioners’ approach to race in child protection cases to better safeguard Black, Asian and mixed-heritage children from harm.

That was the message from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel in a report on the impact of race, ethnicity and culture on multi-agency practice where children have died or suffered serious harm.

The study was based on 54 case reports – 14 local child safeguarding practice reviews and 40 rapid reviews – 25 involving mixed-heritage children, 15 concerning Black children and 14 relating to Asian children.

As previously reported, the panel found that reviews were “silent” about the presence of racial bias in professionals’ decision making and on the role of racism in services’ responses to families.

But to the extent that reviews did address race, they identified significant practice issues, said the panel, whose role is to oversee and draw together learning from serious cases.

Race ‘not recognised’ by practitioners

Race and ethnicity of children was often not recognised, appropriately explored or understood by practitioners, resulting in them not having a full understanding of children’s lived experience and the vulnerabilities they faced.

Fourteen reviews noted that children and families faced service barriers relating to race, ethnicity or culture, including because of past experiences of racism, language barriers, cultural perceptions that seeking support indicated an inability to cope, and practitioner bias.

The latter included the issue of adultification, where professionals attribute adult-like characteristics to Black children and treat them as more responsible than others of a similar age.

One example of this concerned a Black Caribbean child who was viewed as suspicious by professionals for wearing protective clothing after witnessing the murder of a friend. When they were subsequently injured in a knife incident, they were viewed as a perpetrator, not a victim.

‘Not hearing the child’s voice

Seven reviews found that children’s voices and wishes had not been heard by practitioners, while a further 11 highlighted barriers to hearing the child, including fear of retribution from disclosure and communication difficulties.

In 19 reviews, risks to the child had been at least partially recognised, but this had not translated into a professional response, including because disclosures by children had not been appropriately addressed.

This included “several cases” where girls of Asian or mixed Asian heritages had made disclosures about sexual abuse, but these appeared either to have been dismissed as untrue or not carefully followed up.

‘Silence around racism deeply concerning’

Jahnine Davis

Race and safeguarding expert Jahnine Davis, the panel’s lead for the report, said: “The silence around race and racism in child safeguarding practice is deeply concerning.

Improving the safeguarding of Black, Asian and mixed-heritage children meant “challenging current policies, practices and how services are designed and delivered, recognising how racism and racial bias impact our work to protect children”, she added.

Recommendations included that safeguarding partnerships create conditions to empower practitioners to have conversations with children and families about race and identity, and build their skills and confidence. They should also ensure appropriate internal structures are in place to support practitioners to recognise, discuss and challenge internal and institutional racism, the panel said.

Leaders ‘need to equip staff with confidence’

Association of Directors of Children’s Services president Andy Smith said the report made for difficult reading but “must act as a catalyst for further change”.

“Leaders across public services have an important role in addressing discrimination and bias and in supporting anti-racist practice in their organisations by equipping our staff with the confidence and the courage to do so via appropriate training and support, including challenge where necessary,” he added.

“As the panel recognises, these conversations can be hard, but the consequences are too great if we do not get this right in terms of children being seriously harmed, or worse.”

‘Stark evidence gaps’

Sector evidence body Foundations said there were “stark evidence gaps about the experiences and outcomes of racially minoritised children in children’s social care, despite the over-representation of these children in safeguarding reviews”.

Its chief executive. Jo Casebourne, added: “Foundations is committed to taking a proactive role in addressing the issues the panel identifies.

“We will continue to integrate considered and critical examination of race, racism and racial bias into our work, generating evidence on what works to inform local safeguarding strategies, empower leaders and practitioners, and strengthen our collective ability to protect children.”

The number of children on protection plans for child sexual abuse in England has hit a 30-year low, experts have warned.

An “alarming decrease” in the identification of CSA by safeguarding practitioners has left no or very few children on child protection plans in the majority of areas, said the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre).

The findings came in a CSA Centre analysis of data on child sexual abuse for 2023-24, which also flagged up a fall in the number of cases in which sexual abuse or exploitation was identified following a child in need assessment.

The analysis was based on the DfE’s 2023-24 children in need census, which identified year-on-year decreases in the numbers of assessments of children, children in need and children on child protection plans.

Declining number of CSA cases

However, the centre said that the number of cases involving CSA had fallen more steeply than average.

While the total number of child in need assessments recording any concerns fell by 0.4% from 2022-23 to 2023-24, the number identifying CSA fell by 8%, from 33,760 to 30,970, the lowest level since the pandemic year of 2020-21.

There was also an 8% year-on-year drop in the number of assessments that recorded child sexual exploitation (CSE) as a concern, with the 13,860 recorded being the lowest number since 2014-15.

Lowest number of plans for sexual abuse in 30 years

Just 2,160 children were placed on child protection plans for sexual abuse in 2023-24, the lowest number during the 30 years in which this data has been published. The 5.8% fall in the number of such plans from 2022-23 to 2023-24.= compares with a 2.8% drop in the overall number of child protection plans.

The centre also found that seven councils placed no children on plans under the primary category of sexual abuse, while 42 placed a “very low” proportion” on such plans (less than 0.2 per 1,000 children in the area).

In a further 54 councils, the data was suppressed because they had between one and five children placed on a plan for sexual abuse in their area during the year. As a result, 103 councils – two-thirds of the total – had no or very few children placed on child protection plans for CSA, said the centre.

The number of children placed on plans for sexual abuse was equivalent to just 7% of the children whose initial assessments recorded CSA or CSE as concerns in 2023-24. This was similar to the equivalent proportion for physical abuse (6%) but much lower than those of emotional abuse (24%) or neglect (37%).

The number of cases falls far short of the CSA Centre’s estimate – based on a prevalence study published in 2011 – that 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused each year.

Lack of practitioner skill, knowledge and confidence

The findings follow the CSA Centre’s study of intrafamilial CSA for the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, published last year, which found practitioners were frequently not identifying abuse due to a lack of skills, knowledge and confidence.

A consistent theme from cases analysed and discussions with practitioners was an over-reliance on children verbally reporting abuse.

Practitioners reported being told in training that they needed to wait for children to approach them to disclose abuse, rather than proactively talking to them when they had concerns. They were also deterred from speaking to children by an “overriding fear of interfering with any possible future criminal investigation”.

This approach ran contrary to research indicating the multiple barriers children faced in disclosing CSA. Some children in the reviews reported waiting for someone to ask them in order to be able to disclose.

Ministers due to response to CSA inquiry

The CSA Centre’s latest report comes with the government due to publish its plan for implementing the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which reported in 2022.

Ministers have already agreed to implement the inquiry’s headline recommendation – requiring those in positions of trust with children to report cases of CSA that are disclosed to them, or that they witness, or face criminal sanctions.

CSA director Ian Dean said its latest report, and those preceding it, “[underlined] the need for system-wide change in how sexually abused children are identified, responded to and protected by all statutory safeguarding agencies”.

“We need to build a system where professionals have strong leadership, clear guidance, and proper support to identify abuse early and prevent further harm,” he added.

Child criminal exploitation and the ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable people are to be made criminal offences.

The measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, which will be introduced into Parliament this week, are designed to tackle the grooming and exploitation of children and vulnerable adults, including by county lines drug-dealing gangs.

Under the plans, adults could face up to 10 years in prison for using a child to commit criminal activity, while a separate offence will outlaw cuckooing, where criminals take control of a vulnerable person’s home without consent to carry out illegal activities like drug dealing.

Orders to restrict movements of those who exploit children

A separate measure in the bill would create child criminal exploitation (CCE) prevention orders, which would impose restrictions or requirements on people who pose a risk of exploiting children for criminality, such as limiting their ability to contact specific people or go to certain areas.

These would be imposed after criminal proceedings or through an application by the police.

CCE was identified as a factor in 15,750 children in need assessments in England in 2023-24, however, the government said this was likely to underestimate the scale of the problem because many children were not known to the authorities.

Punishing those who ‘prey on children and vulnerable people’

Announcing the new measures, home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We are introducing these two offences to properly punish those who prey on [children and vulnerable people], ensure victims are properly protected and prevent these often-hidden crimes from occurring in the first place.”

The action was welcomed by Children’s Commissioner for England Rachel de Souza and charity the Children’s Society.

Children’s Commissioner for England Rachel de Souza (credit: Office of the Children’s Commissioner)

De Souza said that many exploited children were “ignored and overlooked” and faced “punishment instead of support”.

Commissioner hopes for earlier intervention by professionals

“Introducing this new offence and new prevention orders will help create that much needed clarity that exploited children are victims,” she added:

“I hope this will enable professionals to intervene at far earlier stages of intervention, backed by plans to create a unique identifying number for every child that helps services identify those in need of support.”

The unique identifier for every child, which is designed to improve inter-agency information sharing to safeguard children, is being legislated for through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

For the Children’s Society, chief executive Mark Russell said: “For too long, adults who groom children into criminal activity – forcing them to hold drugs or launder money or commit theft – have evaded accountability. Charges such as drug possession ignore the core truth; these are child abusers exploiting vulnerable young people.”

He said the offences needed to be backed by “strong enforcement, training for safeguarding professionals and a statutory definition of CCE to help end the postcode lottery in victim support”.

The murder of a two-year-old girl by her mother’s boyfriend has highlighted the need for guidance on protecting children when families move across council boundaries, a local child safeguarding practice review (CSPR) has concluded.

The panel reviewing the case of Isabella Jonas-Wheildon, who moved area twice in the weeks before she died, said it showed that issues around cross-border working and information sharing needed to be addressed.

It called on Central Bedfordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership, which commissioned the review, to raise the issue with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel with a view to it developing national guidance on cross-border working.

The national panel, which is responsible for reviewing serious cases and drawing lessons from them, said this was “an important issue which we take very seriously”. It added that it would be addressed in the report of its national review into the case of Baby M, which was initiated in October 2023.

Toddler murdered by mother’s boyfriend

Isabella’s body was found on 30 June 2023 at a hostel in Ipswich, Suffolk; it was estimated that she had been dead for about three days. She had extensive bruising and fractures to her wrist and pelvis, with the latter causing bone marrow to enter her bloodstream triggering an embolism that, along with skeletal trauma, caused her death.

The injuries were all inflicted after her mother, Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, started a relationship with Scott Jeff, in May 2023.

In December 2024, Jeff was jailed for a minimum of 26 years after being found guilty of murdering Isabella, along with two counts of child cruelty. Gleason-Mitchell was imprisoned for 10 years after pleading guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of child cruelty.

Alleged domestic abuse

Isabella spent most of her life in the Central Bedfordshire area with her parents. Gleason-Mitchell had been known to children’s services in the area herself and had a history of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation.

She separated from Isabella’s father in April 2023, making allegations of domestic abuse against him that, at the criminal trial, she said were untrue.

This prompted a referral to Central Bedfordshire’s children’s services, after which Gleason-Mitchell was allocated an independent domestic violence advocate (IDVA), while she also made a homelessness application on the grounds that she was fleeing domestic abuse.

However, she rejected an offer of temporary accommodation after being told that her new boyfriend – Jeff – could not stay with her there.

Jeff was also known to multiple services in Central Bedfordshire due to diagnoses of ADHD and autism, mental health problems, longstanding issues with anger management and reported domestic abuse. During the police enquiry into Isabella’s death, Jeff’s former partner disclosed domestic abuse by him, including coercive control, several assaults and, on one occasion, strangulation.

Multiple moves in Isabella’s final weeks

On 1 June 2023, Gleason-Mitchell, Jeff and Isabella moved to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and the couple made a housing application.

Great Yarmouth council offered emergency accommodation to Gleason-Mitchell and Isabella, but not Jeff, an offer which was not taken up. They were subsequently found to be staying in a tent on the beach by the police, after which they were given temporary accommodation.

The case was referred to Norfolk children’s services, via the emergency duty team, on 19 June 2023.  However, on the same day, the family moved across council boundaries again, to Ipswich in Suffolk.

Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff made an application for housing to the local borough council, claiming they were fleeing domestic abuse from Isabella’s father, and were offered temporary accommodation.

Referrals were also made to Suffolk children’s services, both by Ipswich council’s housing service and Central Bedfordshire council.

Child protection or child in need

Over email, Central Bedfordshire advised that Suffolk undertake a child protection enquiry, under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, because Isabella appeared to be at risk of significant harm. It said this was on the grounds that the family were at risk of being street homeless, had not acted to safeguard Isabella by turning down accommodation twice, had not been open with agencies and had left Norfolk without a plan to safeguard the child.

Central Bedfordshire added that Gleason-Mitchell appeared to be prioritising Jeff over Isabella, and that its housing staff and those in Great Yarmouth had raised concerns about him being controlling. It offered to be part of any strategy discussion to determine whether a section 47 should proceed.

However, following a multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) assessment, Suffolk decided to undertake a child in need assessment, under section 17, on the grounds that the threshold for a strategy discussion had not been met. It concluded that the most significant concern – homelessness – had been addressed and that the other issues could be explored through a section 17 assessment.

The case was passed to the child in need team on 23 June, but the first attempt to contact Gleason-Mitchell was not until 28 June, two days before Isabella was found dead. Suffolk has since tightened up its procedures so that an attempt to contact the family takes place no later than one day after a case is passed to a team for assessment.

‘Siloed’ decision making

The review panel concluded that the case had been characterised by “siloed” decision making by agencies, particularly when the family moved across areas at speed.

This included Isabella’s voice and lived experience not being considered by professionals in the last month of her life, Gleason-Mitchell’s vulnerabilities as a parent not being taken into account and the failure to examine records to uncover knowledge of Jeff and the potential risks he posed.

The review recommended that Central Bedfordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership should:

• Seek assurance from agencies that they always include the voice and lived experience of children, including toddlers and those who are not able to fully communicate verbally, in their assessments and actions, and ask them to provide evidence of the methods they use.
• Remind agencies that assessments and interactions with families consider the role, presence and history of partners living in, or closely associated with, a household.
• Raise professionals’ awareness and understanding of domestic abuse and neglect, including that these are always harmful to children and that practitioners should be able to spot the signs and symptoms of coercive control.
• Initiate discussions with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to consider developing regional or national guidance on cross-border safeguarding.

Cross-border safeguarding being considered in national review

A Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel spokesperson said: “Isabella’s death was deeply tragic and shocking…The local review raises important issues about the quality of information sharing and risk assessment across agencies. These issues need to be addressed at both a local and a national level.

“The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has noted the review’s recommendation about the need for national guidance to support the protection of children when families move across geographic areas.

“It is an important issue which we take very seriously as has been highlighted in other reviews.  We intend therefore to address this issue further in the report on our national review about Baby M.”

Agencies acting on recommendations

In a joint statement, Central Bedfordshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk’s safeguarding children partnerships said all the agencies involved had started implementing the recommendations.

They added: “This has been a case that has touched many people across our counties, and all the safeguarding partnerships involved in this statement have been truly shocked. We all offer our sincere condolences to Isabella’s family and will continue to offer support to anyone who has been affected by her death.”

On behalf of Central Bedfordshire Council, executive member for children and families Steve Owen said: “My focus is on ensuring that the learning from Isabella’s story makes a real difference here in Central Bedfordshire and beyond, and on doing our utmost to keep children, especially young children, as safe as possible.

“I know officers in Central Bedfordshire have been deeply saddened by Isabella’s death and have already implemented many of the recommendations. I will also contact my counterparts in Suffolk and Norfolk to see how we can, together, ensure Isabella’s story brings real change across our areas to better protect children.”

by Rosie R.

Children with disabilities are the most vulnerable children whom we work with. Due to their struggles and impairments, often both of a cognitive and a physical nature, they need to rely on carers who can meet all their needs, and also keep them safe.

This is an account where a young person in a wheelchair was frightened of his mother’s boyfriend, and had no means of keeping himself safe.

As social workers working with this very vulnerable group, we need to be creative to obtain the voice of the chil, from others who know them, since so many of our most vulnerable children also have limited verbal communication, and therefore the possibilities of sharing their worries are significantly reduced.

Photo by Mikael Damkier/AdobeStock

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Staff shortages pose a risk to government plans to bolster the safeguarding of the growing number of children not in school, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) president has warned.

Andy Smith told MPs this week that several councils had less than one full-time equivalent elective home education worker, meaning the workforce was “significantly insufficient” to take on new responsibilities in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

The bill would require councils to create registers of children not in school, collect information on their education arrangements and support parents of home-schooled children with their education on request.

Parents would need to seek councils’ consent to home educate children subject to a child protection enquiry or plan, while councils would need to review the home and learning environments of home-schooled children subject to such safeguarding measures to determine whether they should be required to attend school.

Growing numbers of home educated children

The measures are designed to improve both the safeguarding and education of home educated children, the number of whom has risen from 116,300 during 2021-22 to 153,300 in 2023-24, according to Department for Education data.

In separate appearances before the education select committee and the committee of MPs scrutinising the bill, Smith said councils’ “hollowed out” elective home education (EHE) workforce would lack the capacity to take on these responsibilities without extra resource.

According to a 2021 ADCS survey of directors, councils’ average spend on EHE services in 2020-21 was £86,211, while they employed an average of 2.2 FTE staff for this purpose.

Lack of staff in local authorities

In his evidence to the public bill committee considering the legislation, Smith said that several councils – including his own authority, Derby – had less than one full-time equivalent staff member working on EHE.

“If you superimpose the changes envisaged by the bill, that provision would be significantly insufficient,” he said.

ADCS president for 2024-25, Andy Smith (picture supplied by ADCS)

“If we think about the practical things around visits, understanding the offer, trying to understand what is happening to children and building up that picture, there would need to be sufficient capacity to get sufficient workers in post across places to do that, and they would need be sufficiently trained.”

The point on training was picked up by Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel chair Annie Hudson, who gave evidence alongside Smith to the education select committee this week, as part of its current inquiry into children’s social care.

‘Need to skill up home education staff on safeguarding’

Hudson said visits to children’s homes to consider whether they should be required to attend school when subject to a child protection enquiry or plan would be carried out by EHE staff, who would “not necessarily have deep safeguarding knowledge and expertise”.

“They should have the foundation knowledge, but we will need to be clear so that those officers undertaking that work know what they might need to look at and look for and families know that
so that it is a transparent relationship when the local authorities execute that duty,” she added.

The government is yet to set out how much funding will be available to implement the legislation, but Local Government Association (LGA) assistant director of policy Ruth Stanier said it was vital all new burdens on councils were suitably resourced. She said the LGA and the DfE were holding talks about this already.

Multi-agency child protection teams

Stanier said the bill’s introduction of multi-agency child protection teams was another area that would require additional resource.

Under the plans, councils, chief officers of police and relevant NHS integrated care boards (ICB) would have to set up one or more multi-agency teams for the relevant local authority area. These would comprise at least one representative from each of the NHS and the police, along with at least two practitioners appointed by the local authority, a social worker and an educational professional.

Under the bill, the teams’ role would be to support the relevant local authority in the exercise of its child protection functions, though it is likely that they would in effect carry out those functions.

The idea, which is being tested in 10 areas under the families first for children pathfinder, was based on a recommendation from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel in its 2022 report on the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

Suggested benefits of joint safeguarding teams

Hudson told the education select committee that, while not a panacea for the challenges facing the child protection system, the introduction of the teams had three potential advantages:

1. Making it much easier for professionals from different agencies to share information about children, giving them a “much more real-time picture of what is going on in a child’s life, particularly when there are sudden changes”.
2. Pooling the expertise of different professional disciplines and enabling practitioners from different agencies to challenge, as well as support, one another.
3. Enabling joint decision making about the child, as opposed to the “siloed decision making” evident in the Arthur and Star cases.

Based on the model being tested in the pathfinder area, the multi-agency teams would include so-called lead child protection practitioners, whose role would be to lead child protection enquiries and hold cases.

Concerns over social worker burnout

While expressing broad support for the teams, Smith reiterated ADCS concerns about social workers holding only child protection cases and not working across a wider spectrum of children’s needs.

“We need to mitigate and minimise issues around burnout and make sure that social workers, through their professional development, have a rounded experience of social work across a broad
array of service users and service types,” he told the education select committee.

The teams are one of a number of measures designed to improve multi-agency safeguarding. These include the introduction of a single unique identifier (SUI) for each child, which professionals should use when sharing information, and a duty to share information for safeguarding and welfare purposes.

‘Risk of increasing volume of information’

Smith was cautious about the potential benefits of the changes, given the barriers to information sharing arising from agencies having separate and unconnected IT systems, distinct recording practices and different cultures.

He said the benefits of information sharing came when practitioners from different agencies came together to “understand what is happening for children…moving beyond single incidents”.

“There is a risk that increasing amounts of unanalysed information that might pass from A to B does not necessarily keep children safe,” he told the select committee.

Citing ADCS research that found councils received 3,001,339 safeguarding concerns in 2023-24, Smith warned: “Starting to add additional information that might come through the single unique identifier could increase that exponentially.”

The DfE plans to pilot the SUI prior to nationwide implementation.