SCIE Guide 24: Learning together to safeguard children: developing a multi-agency systems approach for case reviews

By Dr Sheila Fish, Dr Eileen Munro and Sue Bairstow.

Published October 2008

Key messages

Developments in engineering and health indicate the potential benefits of using a ‘systems approach’ to understanding frontline practice in order to improve the quality and safety of service provision.
This guide presents an adapted systems model for multi-agency safeguarding and child protection work.
It is an innovative approach that requires a respectful approach towards the practice experience of street-level workers and their managers.
It involves moving beyond the basic facts of a case chronology and appreciating the differing views that different workers had at the time.
The aim is to identify underlying patterns of factors in the work environment that support good practice or create unsafe conditions in which poor practice is more likely.
This kind of organisational learning is vital to improving the quality of services provision and needs to be applied to ordinary work, not just to tragedies.

This guide summarises SCIE Report 19: Learning together to safeguard children: developing a multi-agency systems approach for case reviews. In it the key concepts of the model are explained before the process of putting them into practice is described.

It has four main sections:

In addition, the appendices provide a set of documents to be used in the review.

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