Safeguarding reviews silent on Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children
Source: gov.uk (2025-03-11)

A new report about race and racism in child safeguarding reveals local areas are failing to address the safeguarding needs of Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has today (11th March 2025) published a report about 53 children from Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage backgrounds who died or were seriously harmed between January 2022 and March 2024. These children were subject to horrific abuse, including sexual abuse, fatal assault and neglect, with 27 children dying as a result.

The report sought to understand the specific safeguarding needs of children from these specific ethnic backgrounds and how agencies helped to protect them before it was too late. It has revealed a significant silence in talking about race and racism in child safeguarding, with many local areas failing to acknowledge the impact of race, ethnicity and culture.

The key findings include:

Limited Attention to Race and Ethnicity: the analysis reveals a concerning lack of focus on race, ethnicity, and culture in both safeguarding practice and reviews. This oversight has resulted in insufficient critical analysis and reflection on how racial bias impacts decision-making and service offers to children.

Silence on Racism: the report identifies a pervasive silence and hesitancy to address racism and its manifestations. This silence renders the safeguarding needs of Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage children invisible, both in practice and in the system for learning from reviews.

Missed Opportunities: in failing to acknowledge race, racial bias and racism, the current system misses many opportunities to learn from incidents where Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage children have been seriously harmed or died. This failure to see the totality of children’s lives or to scrutinise how racial bias may have affected decision-making leaves children vulnerable and at risk of harm, without the necessary support and protection.

Risk-assessment and decision-making is a common theme across all safeguarding reviews, but this analysis has highlighted specific issues in relation to race. For example, in 19 reviews risk had been at least partially recognised, but this had not translated into action. This included several examples about girls from Asian and Mixed Asian Heritages who made disclosures about sexual abuse, but these appeared either to have been disregarded as untrue or were not carefully followed up.

In one review family members had vocalised that they perceived practitioners to be racist. However, the review appeared to distance itself from any possibility of racism by noting that practitioners had been mindful of the ethnicity of the family. The review then concluded these accusations were groundless, but did not provide evidence about whether the claims had been investigated or provide any detail about how this judgement had been made.

The Panel’s report contains a number of recommendations for local areas so they can better protect Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children who are at risk of harm. The lead recommendations include:

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.

These recommendations are a crucial step towards creating a more inclusive and effective safeguarding system that recognises and addresses the unique challenges faced by Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage children.

Annie Hudson, Chair of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel said:

“Racism is insidious, pervasive and deeply embedded in society. The recognition of racism and racial bias as a societal issue is a crucial step in reflecting on, and learning more about, how Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children are protected from abuse and neglect.

“The Panel recognises the important work being undertaken in some safeguarding partnerships to address race and racism and to develop anti-racist practice approaches. However, evidence from this analysis indicates that too often critical questions are avoided, evaded and sidestepped.

“As part of the analysis, the Panel examined its own role and biases in our work with safeguarding partnerships and in national reviews. We are clear we have more to do and want this report to contribute to local and national discussions, building collective knowledge and understanding.

“This is essential if we are to ensure that Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children are safeguarded and receive the help and support they need to thrive and have happy and safe lives.”

Jahnine Davis, Panel lead for the report, said:

“The silence around race and racism in child safeguarding practice is deeply concerning.

“Ensuring that Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage children are safeguarded requires a collective effort to build knowledge and understanding at both local and national levels.

“This means challenging current policies, practices and how services are designed and delivered, recognising how racism and racial bias impact our work to protect children.

“We must recognise racism as a child safeguarding issue, whether it underlies the harm caused to children, or hinders professionals from acting accordingly to protect them.

“This report is a call to action for all safeguarding professionals. We need to be more willing, reflective, critical, and committed to addressing the impact of race and racism in our work. The silence must end now.”

Minister for Children and Families, Janet Daby said:

“Racism and racial bias are completely abhorrent and should never be barriers to keeping children safe and families getting the help they need.

“I’m grateful for the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s work to bring these injustices to light and I urge frontline professionals to challenge biases that could put children in harm’s way.

“More widely, this government’s Plan for Change is prioritising significant reform of the children’s social care system, driving better child protection and information sharing between education, health and social workers to stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks.”

Notes to editors

The independent national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel is an independent body that was set up in July 2018 to identify, commission and oversee reviews of serious child safeguarding cases. It brings together experts from social care, policing, health, education and the third sector to provide a multi-agency view on cases which they believe raise issues that are complex, or of national importance.

A qualitative, thematic analysis was conducted on a sample of 40 rapid reviews and 14 local safeguarding practice reviews (LCSPRs) with incidents that took place between January 2022 and March 2024. Please note that one rapid review and LCSPR explored the same incident about a child who died. Therefore, the analysis covered a total of 53 children who were the focus of safeguarding reviews.

As identified in the Panel’s 2023 to 2024 Annual Report (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-safeguarding-practice-review-panel-annual-report-2023-to-2024), there is an over-representation of Black children and those with mixed ethnicities within child safeguarding reviews compared to the population aged 0 to 17 years old in England.
- Children with Black/African/ Caribbean/Black British ethnicities were the focus of 10% of the reviews but make up 6% of the child population in England.
- Children with mixed/multiple ethnic backgrounds were the focus of 17% of the reviews but make up 7% of the English population.
Conversely, children with Asian/Asian British ethnicities were the focus of 5% of incidents but make up 12% of the child population in England, and are therefore under-represented.

While the report broadly identifies some important learning about safeguarding practice with Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children and their families, the Panel are very mindful that these children are not, and should not be seen as, a homogenous group. Individual children, and different ethnicity groups, will have unique daily life experiences and experience engagement with practitioners in many ways.

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