SCIE Report 68: SCIE Learning Together - reflections from the South West project

Published: November 2014

The 2013 document Working together to safeguard children: a guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children brings a new relevance to the South West pilots of the SCIE systems approach to case reviews and serious case reviews (SCRs) – Learning Together. Adapting to the new policy requirements means that Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and member agencies need to think about the relative strengths of different available systems approaches to organisational learning. This includes what options of scale they offer to allow for a proportionate response.

This report will help readers to:

• understand what the Learning Together methodology is and how it operates along a sliding scale of options
• see for themselves the kind of learning that is produced through this approach
• consider the potential benefits of using a common categorisation system for organising and presenting findings
• appraise the value of the consistent way that Learning Together findings are presented to create transparency and nuance about the strength of evidence behind each finding
• reflect on different ways in which a Learning Together case review can make a real difference, with concrete illustrations
• think about the need for an ‘impact model’ to underpin the evaluation of learning and improvement activities.

The report does not form a formal evaluation of the Learning Together methodology because the South West pilots were conducted by people being simultaneously trained in the approach and supported to try it out for the first time.