A concise practice review was commissioned by Mid & West Wales Safeguarding Children Board following the tragic death of Lola James, a young child, as a result of an unprovoked and violent attack by her mother’s partner.

Emma Sutton KC was appointed as the independent reviewer and was responsible for drafting the report published today.

A copy of the full report together with a 7 minute briefing is available here, the 11 recommendations are as follows:

” 1. For the corporate management team within the local authority to ensure that guidance for heads of service regarding additional funding requests is readily available and understood, and to consider how internal funding decisions can be reviewed if a request for additional funding is rejected. This is particularly important within social services due to the statutory
nature of this service, and the need to maintain an effective operating level in line with statutory duties. Where these pressures are not able to be met or statutory duties are compromised, this should be highlighted clearly in the director of social services’ annual report for the attention of elected members and the public.

2. For training to be arranged for practitioners and managers within children’s services regarding the assessment/sign off process, and for senior officials within children’s
services to ensure there is a robust process in place for auditing assessments. For senior officials to also review whether the current supervision arrangements for both social workers and team managers is appropriate, and to urgently review whether other assessments within children’s services have been completed and closed in a similar way to child A, and to consider whether this review should be undertaken independently. Practitioners within adult services to be reminded in supervision meetings of the need for wider consultation with relevant professionals when undertaking adult needs assessments.

3. For senior officials within children’s services, in conjunction with HR, to ensure that a policy is in place regarding how staff are supported when sickness issues arise to avoid crisis/ prolonged staff leave, and to address how cases are managed when staff are on sick leave. The latter point to include consideration of how records are managed when staff are on sick leave, and for such issues to be considered as part of the return to work and sickness absence review processes.

4. For senior officials within children’s services to finalise a template for rapid reviews to be undertaken effectively and timely following a child’s death or serious incident in an open or recently closed case. Consideration should also be given to how that rapid review process can (itself) be reviewed to ensure its effectiveness.

5. Agencies to review and provide assurance that training and guidance is available to multiagency practitioners in respect of completing and understanding thresholds for completing Multi-Agency Referral Forms (“MARFs”), and for a robust quality assurance process to be put in place to ensure that the MARF process is correctly and effectively utilised by practitioners.

6. Agencies to consider mechanisms which would facilitate multi-agency decision making and collaborative practice in respect of children and families where concerns fall below the threshold of significant harm, including the formation of multi-agency safeguarding hubs, and for consideration for such hubs to meet “virtually” having regard to the wide geographical area.

7. Agencies to ensure that sharing policies and practice guides are up to date in line with current legislation, policy and procedures, for further training to be undertaken on information sharing, and for an audit on staff training to be undertaken. This relates to CYSUR 1 2021 Child Practice Review Report CYSUR 1/2021 Report Page 30 of 35 information sharing between practitioners and information between professionals and a non-resident parent.

8. Information sharing between compulsory education and early years settings to be explored by local education services to facilitate sharing of sibling information, alongside national consideration of this issue (see CIW report commissioned by the Welsh Government, September 2023).

9. Multi-agency training to be undertaken and greater managerial support for complex cases where there are difficulties engaging with parents or carers, and for a robust quality
assurance process to be put in place to evidence that training/greater managerial support (regarding the issue of difficulties with parental engagement/engagement with other relevant persons, etc) is being addressed.

10. Regional police force to pursue implementation of a flagging mechanism of a specific address (within the operational database) where there is a wider history of safeguarding concerns linked to that address (absent an incident being logged as a “domestic” incident).

11. For supervision sessions with relevant practitioners within the respective agencies to address the importance of using specific terminology when completing records/reports, and for professionals to be reminded of the importance of providing sufficiently detailed/ contemporaneous records. This is to include making it clear which individual(s) in or around a family are being referred to. “

Coverage from Sky News is here.