Responding to a parliamentary question, children’s minister Edward Timpson revealed that from 2012 there was a dramatic increase in the number of SCRs both commissioned and published.
Between April 2013 and March 2014 there were 114 serious case reviews commissioned and 71 published, compared with 2012/13, when 81 were commissioned and 31 published.
Between 2011 and 2012, just 12 were published out of only 55 commissioned SCRs.
Sue Woolmore, chair of the Association of Independent Local Safeguarding Children Board Chairs, says a key factor behind the rise is the fact that Ofsted ceased evaluating SCRs from July 2012.
This had been a recommendation by Professor Eileen Munro in her child protection review.
The March 2013 release of revised Working Together to Safeguard Children guidance, which gave Local Safeguarding Children Boards greater flexibility in how they carry out SCRs, was also pivotal, she added.
Relaxation of SCR procedures was another recommendation made by Professor Munro.
Woolmore, said: “Commissioning and publishing a SCR was a big challenge as the process was very prescriptive for Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs).
“What the Working Together revisions did was give LSCBs much more flexibility.
"For example, under the old system a LSCB would have been obliged to look far more deeply into family history, up to 20 years.
"Now, if it was appropriate they need not go back that far. The previous system also really wasn’t designed with publication in mind.”
She added that the Ofsted change was important as “when SCRs were being evaluated by Ofsted it created a greater focus on that process of evaluation. When it ended it enabled LSCBs to fully focus on the review itself.”
Woolmore said she does not believe the creation of the Serious Case Review panel, set up by the government in 2013 to ensure lessons are learned from SCRs, has contributed significantly to the spike in the figures.
In 2011 an investigation by CYP Now found that the number of SCRs dropped sharply in the wake of the coalition government's policy of publishing serious case reviews being introduced.
