FOI release

Children's social services - Serious case reviews in the past 20 years

This request was refused in part, so we didn't provide some of the information the requester asked for. This may include information where we can neither confirm nor deny that we hold it.

Case reference FOI2025/00806

Received 22 April 2025

Published 12 May 2025

Request

Social Services Serious Case Reviews:

Under the The Local Safeguarding Children Boards Regulations 2006 a function of Local Safeguarding Children Boards is to undertake serious cases reviews to advise the authority and their Board partners on lessons to be learned.

A) Has this council undertaken any serious case reviews in the past 20 years?

B) Can you share the conclusions?

Response

Social Services Serious Case Reviews:

Under the The Local Safeguarding Children Boards Regulations 2006 a function of Local Safeguarding Children Boards is to undertake serious cases reviews to advise the authority and their Board partners on lessons to be learned.

A) Has this council undertaken any serious case reviews in the past 20 years?

Answer: Yes. The Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership has undertaken 14 Serious Case Reviews (now called Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews) since 2006. 9 of these are published and available online on the NSPCC repository. The remaining 5 Serious Case Reviews were either published with an unnamed Local Authority (published on the NSPCC repository, however not identifiable as a Herefordshire review), or a decision was taken not to publish the review. For reviews that were either published with an unnamed LA, or were not published, this decision was taken in order to protect the welfare or identity of a person in line with statutory guidance (Working Together to Safeguarding Children).

B) Can you share the conclusions?

Answer: The conclusions of published reviews are publically available on the NSPCC National Collection of Case Reviews website and can be viewed via the following link:

National Case Review Collection: a repository of published reports | NSPCC Learning.

You can find Herefordshire’s published case reviews by entering “Herefordshire” in the Search Items field, then selecting “Search.”

As such we consider this information to be exempt under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 because it is reasonably accessible to you via other means. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.

Documents

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