Serious injuries to a 10-week-old infant in early 2020. Medical examinations determined that the injuries were caused by inflicted trauma.
Key Findings
- Single agency learning includes: consistency of social worker to co-ordinate holistic and purposeful assessment of parenting capacity; robust supervision and management oversight to support social workers to reflect on progress of assessment and consider likelihood and severity of risks as well as strengths and protective factors; police officers should escalate their concerns about the action or inaction of another agency where they consider that a child remains at risk of significant harm; contemporaneous and comprehensive recording of discussions, plans and agreed actions for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, including discharge from hospital.
- Learning across the partnership includes: understanding and defining levels of need/statutory threshold; there is further work to do to improve the effectiveness of multiagency strategy discussions; embracing and resolving professional differences as an opportunity to share expertise, evaluate need/risk and promote a culture of shared accountability; need for a clear process for transferring child in need cases between local authority children's social care services; shared accountability needs to operate at an individual, organisational and system level; the need for professional knowledge of safeguarding legislation, guidance and procedures.
- Recommendations are embedded in the learning.
To download this document, please click the link below.