City of Leeds Council: Two safeguarding cases where children suffered ‘serious harm’ referred to national panel

The cases, each of which involved a youngster suffering serious harm, were flagged to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel by the Leeds authorities for attention.

Leeds City Council members were told of the developments at a scrutiny board on Wednesday.

Protocol dictates that local authorities must refer all cases where a child has come to serious harm to the national panel. The panel then reviews the incident in question and whether or not more could have been done to prevent suffering to the child.

No details relating to either case were revealed.

But Phil Coneron, from the Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership, told councillors both had been escalated since April this year.

He said: “We’re still waiting for feedback from the national panel, to see whether they agree or disagree with our conclusion on those particular cases.

“There was a third case referred to us, but after further scrutiny from the police and children’s social workers it was decided the injury the child sustained was accidental.”

Senior figures in Leeds were heavily criticised earlier this year when it was revealed that the repeated rape of an underage girl by her paedophile guardian had not been escalated nationally.

Although local police and health officials had wanted to refer the case upwards, council officers had vetoed the move, arguing it did not meet the serious harm threshold.

The victim, anonymously referred to as ‘Ruby’ in the shocking safeguarding report published in January, had been placed in the care of the man, despite the authorities knowing he was a convicted sex offender.

Wednesday’s meeting was told there’d since been a “significant improvement” in collaboration between the council, police and the NHS on safeguarding matters.

Conservative councillor Ryan Stephenson, who was one of the local authority’s fiercest critics on how Ruby was treated, likened trying to get information on that case to “pulling teeth”.

He warned that “democratic oversight” from councillors on safeguarding processes must continue to improve to ensure transparency.

But he added: “It’s fair to say the process today seems a lot better than it was and there seems to have been willingness from all the partners to get it to that place.”