The Longer-term Impact of Safeguarding Children Peer Reviews
25 February 2013
NFER is currently undertaking an evaluation of the longer-term impacts of the LGA’s Safeguarding Children Peer Review programme. This first interim report presents the findings from the early phases of the research, detailing six local authorities’ expectations and anticipated outcomes of their involvement in the peer review process.
Key Findings
- The six local authorities’ hoped that the peer review would support authentic and real-world reflective practice and improvement, both in general and in relation to specific service or process improvement
- The local authorities gave high priority to the safeguarding children peer review as a method of complementing and supporting their existing evaluation activities, commonly reporting that they expected the review process to offer insights of a different nature to other, internally directed activities
- The local authorities’ anticipated impacts can be categorised into impacts relating to insights into their strengths and areas of weakness, actions to develop services or working practices, and outcomes for safeguarding practice
- Many of the local authorities had not yet implemented systematic processes for recording, measuring and evidencing the impact of their safeguarding children peer review.