National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel
key reviews and reports
These are some of the most important and current national publications that bring together system-wide learning.
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel Annual Reports (latest 2024–2025 and 2023–2024)
These provide a national overview of serious incidents, identifying recurring themes such as neglect, domestic abuse and parental mental health, and highlight where multi-agency practice needs to improve.
Protecting all vulnerable babies better (2026)
A recent national review calling for improvements in how agencies identify and respond to risks to unborn babies and infants
National review into child sexual abuse within the family environment (2024)
A significant thematic review analysing multiple incidents and reviews to identify challenges in recognising and responding to intra-familial abuse
National review into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson (2022)
A high-profile review highlighting failures in multi-agency safeguarding, information sharing and decision-making.
Safeguarding children with disabilities in residential settings (2023)
Focuses on vulnerability, oversight and safeguarding in residential care environments.
Safeguarding children under 1 year old from non-accidental injury (2021)
Identifies risk factors and practice improvements for working with infants.
Safeguarding children at risk from sudden unexpected infant death (2020)
Links safeguarding practice with safe sleeping and risk assessment.
Safeguarding children at risk from criminal exploitation (2020)
Focuses on contextual safeguarding, exploitation and multi-agency disruption approaches.
National thematic analyses and legacy serious case review reports
These are particularly useful for embedding learning and reflective practice.
- Learning for the future: final analysis of serious case reviews 2017–2019
• Triennial analysis of Serious Case Reviews 2014–2017 (Complexity and Challenge)
These reports analyse hundreds of cases to identify recurring systemic issues and practice challenges across safeguarding partnerships.
National safeguarding briefing papers (useful for themed learning pages or toolkits)
- Race, racism and safeguarding children (2025)
• Safeguarding children in elective home education (2024)
• Multi-agency safeguarding and domestic abuse (2022)
• Management of bruising in non-mobile infants (2022)
These provide focused learning on specific safeguarding themes and are useful for linking to your one minute guides and briefings.