How local authorities should report a serious child safeguarding incident
Guidance published by Ofsted
Ofsted has published guidance advising local authorities how they should report a serious incident of child abuse or neglect, or the death of a child who is looked after.
For safeguarding incidents, from 29 June 2018 local authorities in England must notify the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel within five working days of becoming aware of a serious incident.
A local authority should report incidents where it knows or suspects that a child has been abused or neglected and:
- the child dies (including suspected suicide) or is seriously harmed in the local authority's area
- while normally resident in the local authority's area, the child dies or is seriously harmed outside England.
The local authority should also report the incident to the relevant local safeguarding children board (LSCB) at the same time as notifying the panel.
For the online notification form, click here.
For cases of child death, the local authority should:
- submit a separate notification form for each child that died.
For cases of serious harm to siblings, the local authority should:
- only submit a single notification form providing details of the harm suffered by all the children in the family.
For cases of serious harm to more than one child, where the children are not siblings, the local authority should:
- submit a separate notification form for each child.
For Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) cases where there is a large-scale police operation in progress, where there can be large numbers of children who are either witnesses or victims, the local authority should:
- submit a single notification form for the main child who is believed to be a victim of abuse and add brief identifying details of the other children understood to be victims in the case outline free text box.
For the full guidance, click here.
29/6/18