Chapter 5 of the statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 places a duty on local safeguarding partnerships to undertake a rapid review for serious child safeguarding cases.

Serious child safeguarding cases are those in which:

• Abuse or neglect of a child is known or suspected;

and

• The child has died or been seriously harmed.

Serious harm includes (but is not limited to) serious and/or long-term impairment of a child’s:

• Mental health; or
• Intellectual, emotional, social, or behavioural development; or
• Impairment of physical health.

The purpose of a rapid review is to:

• Gather the facts about the case, as far as they can be readily established at the time;
• Discuss whether there is any immediate action needed to ensure children’s safety and share any learning appropriately;
• Consider the potential for identifying improvements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;
• Decide what steps they should take next, including whether or not to undertake a child safeguarding practice review.

All agencies who have been involved with the subject child or family will be required to contribute to the rapid review. An initial scoping of agencies’ intervention will be completed, and other relevant information will need to be rapidly gathered.

To support this, agencies are asked to produce an Individual Agency Summary.

The purpose of the initial scoping and information sharing is to gather the basic facts about the case, including determining the extent of agency involvement with the child and family.

More detailed information will be sought if the rapid review concludes the case has the potential to identify national or local learning and a decision is made to recommend a Child Safeguarding Practice Review, or an alternative Learning Review.

Although any agency can refer a case (see attached referral form) all notifications to Ofsted and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel must come from the Local Authority.

Once the Local Authority notifies Ofsted, this becomes a rapid review referral and Warwickshire Safeguarding will be required to comply with the 15-day timeframe stipulated within Working Together 2026. Click here for an overview of the process

The safeguarding partners are responsible for commissioning and supervising reviewers for local reviews.

The safeguarding partners should agree with the reviewer the method by which the review should be conducted. The methodology should provide a way of looking at and analysing frontline practice as well as organisational structures and learning. The methodology should be able to reach recommendations that will improve outcomes for children, young people and families.

Safeguarding partners should seek to ensure that:

• Practitioners are fully involved in reviews and invited to contribute their perspectives without fear of being blamed for actions they took in good faith;
• Families, including surviving children, are invited to contribute to reviews.

The responsibility for learning lessons from serious child safeguarding incidents lies with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel at a national level and safeguarding partners at a local level (local authorities, chief officers of police and clinical commissioning groups).

Within Warwickshire, the Safeguarding Reviews Subgroup leads this work at a local level and produces Lessons Learned Briefings and 7 Minute Briefings, which sit alongside the published report.  These briefings provide a summary overview of the story of the child or adult, what we learned and advice for practitioners and the community to support wider learning across the County.