Neglect and serious case reviews (PDF, 735KB) - nspcc

1. The context of neglect and serious case reviews
local professionals and organisations work individually and together to safeguard and
promote the welfare of children.
Unlike many other countries, who only review deaths, the four UK nations also consider
carrying out a serious case review where a child is seriously injured or seriously harmed
as a result of abuse or neglect. This allows learning from near misses and instances
where children would have died if urgent action had not been taken, and also those
cases where serious harm was inflicted on children over very many years rather than as
a single incident or over a brief period of time. Neglect in serious case reviews features
in all these circumstances; where children die, where there is a near fatality and where
children have suffered long-term harm or where they suffer serious injury.
Neglect is defined in the statutory guidance for England in Working Together as follows:
‘Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and /or psychological
needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development.
Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance misuse. Once
a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:
• Provide adequate food, clothing and shelter (including exclusion from home or
abandonment);
• Protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger;
• Ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate caregivers); or
• Ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment.
It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional
needs’
(HM Government 2010:39).
Although the national definition emphasises the serious impairment of the child’s
development that results from neglect, it does not spell out that the long-term impact
can be linked to suicide. This type of child death in serious case reviews, among others,
is often related to but not directly caused by maltreatment where young people have a
history of neglectful care. Indeed in a number of serious case reviews the child’s death
is categorised as related to but not directly caused by maltreatment (Sidebotham et al
2011). These types of cases are reported in more detail in Chapter 2 and 3 and include
sudden unexpected deaths in infancy where neglect was a concern, and accident cases,
including where there was inadequate supervision of a child.
1.3 why iS thiS Study importaNt aNd what are itS limitatioNS?
In spite of better recognition of the pernicious, short term and long-term harm that
stems from living with neglect during childhood (Daniel et al 2011; Gilbert et al 2009),
in practice, and even in serious case reviews, neglect and harm from neglect can still
be minimised and downgraded, or go unrecognised and unreported (Gardner 2008). In
addition, although the long-term impact of neglect is known to be corrosive, neglect is
17