Agenda item

 The Committee to discuss the findings of  a published Serious Case Review.

The Committee received a presentation from the Head of Service for First Response about the key findings of a serious case review into a domestic violence incident in which a father had caused the death of a mother  which had led to a family of children coming into the care of the local authority. The executive summary of the serious case review was published on the LSCB website and the consideration of this case provided the Committee with an understanding of the impact of domestic violence on children. The Committee considered the: background and circumstances around the case, the agencies involved, the communication lines between agencies. Members further noted that the lack of a full picture held by the agencies involved in the domestic violence case had led to a series of misunderstandings. Members noted the recommendations of the review, which included a joined up approach to domestic violence across the partnership.

 In terms of meeting child protection requirements, there had been key practices implemented following the recommendations of the review with partners now looking in more detail at domestic violence incidences to ascertain whether there were children or unborn children in the household. There was more recognition that,  children may  not be experiencing physical abuse and  therefore be signalled to services through  the usual routes of schools or GP’s. The SCR highlighted  that children  could be  passive recipients of  domestic violence and will develop mechanisms for dealing with this which  will not  always be  explicit and therefore detectable by  schools, General Practitioners or other services.   Partners were taking on board this advice form the SCR and where  there were reports of domestic violence  received with children in the household, there was now an immediate referral to children’s social care teams.  The Committee noted that often domestic violence was under reported, however there would follow a review of  Merlin, this was the police notification system where referrals were held which did not reach a crime threshold.

The serious case review had highlighted issues about the involvement of Adult Health and Mental Health Services and the connections they make with children services and other agencies.  The Committee discussed the health links in the case and comment was made on the amount of responsibility and pressure placed on General Practitioner’s to identify underlying issues when meeting patients and then making necessary referrals to adults and children related services.  In this case the father   had not been registered with General Practitioners in his adult life but had contact with mental health services, probation and MARAC.  These services were reported in the SCR to have been adult focused and not communicated their work with the father to Children’s services.  The Committee discussed the type of focus given by services and agencies  to males and to their responsibility in the family unit. There had been a recent article on the paradox of father presence and absence in child welfare which the Head of First Response agreed to circulate to Committee Members.

The Committee sought understanding about linkages between Adult services databases and Social Care databases to understand how contacts made with Adult and children’s social care services can be shared.  They were informed that there was currently discussion about  Adult Mental Health services data and Probation data being shared and accessed by the MASH (Multi Agency Screening Team) based in First Response. The Committee were also asked to keep in mind that the thresholds of information required   in adult service database would be different to the level of information held in the children’s social care database.