Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to review the Serious Case Reviews from the last 20 years and (a) make an assessment of the effectiveness of that process and (b) ensure lessons learned have been implemented and relevant policies updated in response to the findings of those reviews.

Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) are locally led enquiries and as such most recommendations are for local safeguarding partnerships to implement. Those that include national recommendations are considered by those with responsibility across government. The department has also commissioned regular reviews of SCRs to analyse their content, the latest of which was published in March 2020.

Since 2018, SCRs have been replaced by Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, which introduced a stronger focus on learning from serious incidents. As part of the new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, Safeguarding Partnerships are required to report annually on how they have implemented the learning from local reviews. These are published and submitted to the National Panel.