Ofsted's chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw said he has "growing concerns" about the failure of some police forces to take their child protection responsibilities seriously.
He added that if action is not taken, there could be "a repeat of the sort of catastrophic failings we saw a few years ago in places like Rotherham, Oxford and elsewhere".
A letter from Wilshaw to the chief inspector of constabulary, Sir Tom Winsor, states that in the past 12 months more than half of Ofsted's 42 inspections of local authority children's services identified serious weaknesses in the work of police in safeguarding children.
He said inspectors found examples where police forces were not sharing information about domestic abuse cases in a timely way, and were not notifying social workers quickly enough when children went missing.
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