Campaigners slam government refusal to publish safeguarding review

Thirty organisations wrote to Annie Hudson, chair of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel at the end of April, requesting that the report be made public to help inform legal and policy developments around the care and protection of children in care.

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But the response, published by children’s rights charity Article 39, came days after the panel published its national review into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, and states that it would not publish its analysis because “the primary purpose was to inform the panel’s overall knowledge of incidents – the learning from which has been shared – and the work was not carried out with publication in mind”.

Article 39 lodged a Freedom of Information request in December 2021 to make the report public but this was refused leading the charity to lodge a complaint over the information being withheld with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Article 39 is awaiting the ICO’s decision.

Some of the 48 incidents that are likely to have been included in the report are the cases of 29 children aged 16 and 17 who died while living in unregulated supported accommodation between 2016 and 2021, Article 39 says. 

A further 17 incidents of children dying or enduring serious harm occurred in 2021/22 in unregulated accommodation, data published by the Department of Education (DfE) in May reveals. 

The child safeguarding body’s annual report for 2020, published in May 2021, said that its analysis of the 48 incidents found teenagers were entering care after many years of parental abuse and neglect, and indicated the care system was ill-equipped to care for and protect them, with “high levels of placement breakdown” and unregulated properties were being used as emergency accommodation. 

The publication of the body’s annual report came shortly after the government banned the use of unregulated accommodation for children in care aged 15 and under from September 2021, but left children aged 16 and 17 without this same protection. 

Article 39 is legally challenging the secondary legislation, arguing that it irrationally discriminates against children in care aged 16 and 17. 

Carolyne Willow, director of Article 39, said: “It cannot be right that the national child safeguarding body and the Department for Education are sitting on a report which analyses the deaths and serious harms suffered by children in the care of the state when g overnment policy quite rightly expects transparency and collective learning when highly vulnerable children are not protected within their families.”

She added: “The child safeguarding panel’s analysis of what went wrong for children in care should have informed government policy on the use of unregulated accommodation, and it should be contributing now to other urgent changes in the care system so that every child, whether they are six or 16 years old, feels safe and secure. The whole purpose of the panel is to facilitate learning and improvements in child protection across the country, irrespective of how and where children came to be seriously harmed.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Education told CYP Now: “The death or harm of a child is a tragedy. We have already taken robust steps to protect children in care and are ensuring that lessons are learnt from these cases.

“We have banned the placement of under-16s in un-regulated accommodation and are investing more than £140 million to introduce mandatory national standards, meaning that from 2023 every type of social care placement for children up to the age of 18 will be regulated by Ofsted.” 

The spokesperson said that releasing the analysis would “damage the trust” and working relationship between the panel, DfE and safeguarding partners going forward and that the data in question also contains “highly personal and sensitive information that could lead to children being identified, so would not be appropriate to release into the public domain”.

They suggested that Article 39 seek the information in other ways, for example by contacting Local Safeguarding Partnerships. 

Carole Littlechild, chair of Nagalro, the professional association for family court advisers, children’s guardians and independent social workers, said: “It is an extraordinary indictment on current policy that it should be regarded in any way acceptable for the national statutory body for child safeguarding to keep back vital information about children of 16 and 17 who die or who are seriously harmed whilst in local authority care. 

“To withhold such crucial detail when policy about unregulated placements for that age group of children was being developed betrays both those children and future children who should be able to rely on state protection and safe care.”