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

Neglect and Serious Case Reviews
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• To understand parent–child relationships better, practitioners should ask themselves:
what does this child mean to the parent and what does the parent mean to the child?
(Brandon et al 2011). Reflective, challenging supervision helps practitioners to
understand relationships and should support them to act decisively when children are
in danger.
• Missed appointments should be followed up and not considered a reason to withdraw
a service.
• Children who disappear from view may be at risk of severe or life threatening harm
from neglect. This may include children who are not in school and older adolescents
who go off the radar of helping professionals and may be a risk to themselves. To be
safe children need to be seen.
The fact that neglect is not only harmful but can also be fatal should be part of a
practitioner’s mindset as it would be with other kinds of maltreatment. This is not to be
alarmist nor to suggest predicting or presuming that where neglect is found the child is
at risk of death, but rather to suggest that practitioners and managers should recognize
how easily the harm that can come from neglect can be minimised or downgraded. In
the same way there should be recognition of the harm that arises when neglect cases
drift. Practitioners need to have an open mind about the possibility of neglect having
a fatal or very serious outcome for a child but deal with neglect cases in a confident,
systematic and compassionate manner.