Referrals to Children’s Social Care

John Woodhouse is a founding director of Safeguarding Network having previously worked as a senior local authority social care manager leading Looked After young people services and Child Protection services for a local authority, run a safeguarding training company and been a chair of governors.

The first role in the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) job description in early years settings, schools and colleges in Keeping Children Safe in Education is to “refer cases of suspected abuse to the local authority children’s social care as required” (p97). The history of the DSL role is rooted in communications with children’s social care, recognising the need to have a named senior leader who has the lead responsibility to share concerns and work with risk to children with partner agencies.

There is a recognition in this that sharing responsibility with other agencies is a vulnerable point in the process. Do both agencies share the concern? What happens if there are differences in view? How is information communicated? What administrative errors may affect the process? Who is left ‘holding the baby’ if things go wrong?

The Social Care Institute for Excellence reviewed 38 Serious Case Reviews in 2016 and gathered further information from panels of professionals. They identified fourteen themes, including ten issues relating to referrals and information sharing:

1. Disagreement about use of early help assessment
2. Confusion about ‘referrals’ and ‘contacts’ in children’s social care (CSC)
3. Not making a referral after bruising to non-mobile babies
4. Not making a referral when young people disclose sexual activity
5. Unresolved disagreement about the need for children's social care involvement
6. Not convening strategy discussions
7. Confusion about interpretation of medical information on cause of injury
8. Incomplete information sharing by schools in child protection
9. Misinterpretation of Police decisions not to pursue a prosecution
10. Euphemistic language in reports and written records

This remains a current issue – 14 of the 33 Case Reviews recently published on the national case review repository in 2020 included issues around referral or information sharing.

Attempting to involve children’s social care bring many dilemmas, from our personal feelings and bias through to the enormous impact of austerity on statutory services. We’ve written previously on the reducing availability of services for children in need and at risk of protection in the context of rising need. While staff in schools and local authority children’s services may strive to keep children’s best interests at heart, they do this within the context of strained systems and limited resources, of IT systems that often do not communicate effectively and of unconscious aspects of professional dangerousness that cloud judgement and decision-making.

The advent of electronic safeguarding files (such as MyConcern or CPOMS) in schools and colleges supports better recording, organisation and communication and some areas are trialling direct access between education settings and social care. There is also a growing recognition that children’s safety underpins effective learning, for example in the 2019 Government response to the Review of Children in Need and much greater priority has been placed on the needs of vulnerable learners, including those who have had a social worker.