The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has published its report following its thematic review of a sample of safeguarding reviews in relation to Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children. It has concluded that there needs to be a “sea change” in how issues about race, culture and ethnicity are addressed in safeguarding practice and has given a number of recommendations. The findings are relevant to youth practitioners seeking to embed safeguarding into their practice.
Details
The aim of the Panel’s review was to examine the impact of race, ethnicity on multi-agency practice where children have suffered serious harm or died, between January 2022 and March 2024.
The Panel highlighted that:
- there was insufficient focus on race, ethnicity, and culture in safeguarding practice and safeguarding reviews;
- within safeguarding reviews, there was pervasive silence and hesitancy to address racism and its manifestations; and
- the current safeguarding system insufficiently acknowledges race, racial bias and racism.
Accordingly, the Panel provided a number of recommendations for safeguarding partnerships, with the lead recommendations identified by the Panel in its accompanying press release as follows:
- Acknowledging and Challenging Racism: local leaders should ensure that appropriate internal structures are in place to support practitioners to recognise, discuss and challenge internal and institutional racism.
- Empowering Practitioners: creating conditions that empower practitioners to have conversations with children and families about race and identity. This includes building skills and confidence and ensuring there are safe opportunities for self-reflection within teams and in supervision to acknowledge their own biases.
- Reviewing Local Strategies: Child Safeguarding Partnerships should review their local strategies and approaches to addressing race, racism, and racial bias in their work with Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage children.
The Panel’s other recommendations within the report (page 53) also include:
- that safeguarding review commissioning processes should start from the position that children and families from Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage backgrounds will have experienced racism in their lives;
- that safeguarding partnerships should ensure there are safe opportunities for self-reflection within teams and in supervision to enable them to acknowledge their own biases in relation to safeguarding practices; and
- that safeguarding practices should give specific account to the design and commissioning of services (including but not limited to translation services).
Commentary
These findings are initially directed at child safeguarding partnerships – multi-agency collaborations between the local authority and police designed to protect the welfare of children. Many Youth Justice Service workers will be part of these meetings and therefore these findings and recommendations will be directly relevant to their work.
Additionally, both legal representatives and Youth Justice workers have safeguarding responsibilities to the children and young people they work with and it should give us all cause for reflection that a child’s race, culture or ethnicity can impact the way they are safeguarded and that the current safeguarding system insufficiently acknowledges race and racism. It is important to hold safeguarding partnerships to account on these conclusions and recommendations, as well as integrate the learnings into practice.