There has been a fair bit of publicity about the Children and Social Work Act 2017 with the changes to the professional journey of child care social workers. There has been far less comment about the implementation of the Wood review on Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and Serious Case Review (SCRs). There will be no legal requirement to have a LSCB but there will be a requirement instead for safeguarding partners to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The partners are the local authority, Clinical Commissioning Group and the Police.

SCRs as we now know them will cease. There will be about 20 cases of national importance reviewed by a central body - the Child Safeguarding Review Panel. All the other cases will be subject to local child safe practice reviews. These are meant to be low key and the reports will go to the central body. It will be interesting to see whether this does end up being less bureaucratic and repetitious.