Failings of SCRs are a concern for safety of children

ASIGNIFICANT case review, or SCR, takes place after a child dies or is significantly harmed, in a context of abuse or neglect. They can also be held in the event that the young person harms or even kills someone themselves.

They are meant to identify failings, breakdowns in communication and opportunities missed that might be used to change current practice and avoid similar events.

The report from the Care Inspectorate last week summarising 20 such SCRs carried out by councils and child protection committees over the last three years included interesting – if predictable – findings.

The children in whose lives these crises occurred were often living in situations where parental abuse of drink or drugs or both was a major factor. Domestic violence was common and nearly a third of cases were in families with four children or more. In 13 cases, a parent had mental health problems.

What was far more useful, but also troubling, about the survey was the revelation that even now, the quality of SCRs carried out is variable, with some lacking in rigour. Where there were lessons to be learnt it wasn’t always clear what needed to improve.

Another red flag came in the form of warnings about social worker workload. Supervision was often lacking. In some cases new staff were taking responsibility for complex child protection cases.

Finally, policies such as Girfec (Getting it right for every child) make it clear all professionals are responsible for ensuring children are safe. In theory. But the report says ‘poor implementation’ with other agencies leave the lead worker to make tough decisions.

Will there be any reaction? The Scottish Government has disbanded WithScotland, which used to help ensure lessons from such reviews were shared. But there are questions about the quality of the SCRs too.

This doesn’t seem good enough when we are talking about reviews exploring – for example – why a young person caused the death of another individual, why selfharming, risk-taking behaviour led to the death of five teenaged girls and a boy, and why a baby drowned in the bath while its drug-using parents were “distracted”.