Edition 159 – August 2022
No matter whether you are doing a Domestic Homicide Review, a Child Safeguarding Practice Review or a Safeguarding Adults Review you will be encountering themes that we have seen in reviews before. And you may well be encountering themes identified in previous reviews in that particular local area before, too.
Since Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018, when it came to reviews of childrens safeguarding cases, we changed to a system of local reviews & national reviews. Local reviews were designed to generate local learning & national reviews were to take place in respect of safeguarding incidents that raise complex issues or become important on a national scale.
At the start of this journey, it was hard to envisage what the learning generated by each would look like & where there would be overlaps. Would recurring themes be drawn together for national learning? Now we have examples to draw on. We continue to consider recurring themes locally, which makes sense as local lessons and national lessons offer something entirely different.
For instance, the national review ‘Child Protection in England, National Review into the Murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes & Star Hobson’ was published in May 2022* This review generated 2 important factors about child protection, 9 local recommendations for safeguarding partners in Solihull, 6 local recommendations for safeguarding partners in Bradford & 10 national recommendations. The latter are concerned with, for instance, introduction of new Multi-Agency Child Protection Units. The local ones address issues arising locally surrounding threshold & assessments, for example.
For this reason, I believe that whether we are in a Domestic Homicide Review, a Safeguarding Adults Review or a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review, it is important we understand the need to offer new & different solutions to recurring problems. Recurring themes should not mean adding repetitive layers of improvement activity.
Are you with on board?
If so, my invitation is for you to join Jonathan Dickens** & I on 19th September from 1.00-2.30pm in a FREE live workshop called ‘5 Misconceptions about Recurring Themes in Reviews’ . Click here to check the details & reserve your seat.
You are also invited to join Karen Wright and I on 15th September 1-2.30pm for free learning called Robust Reviews Using Appreciative Enquiry Techniques. This 90 minute masterclass will get you started with all of the techniques we use in our SILP Appreciative Enquiry Certification™ plus how and where to apply them in our next review. Click here to check the details & reserve your seat.