26 November 2025

The Victoria Climbie Foundation UK have repeatedly called for accountability for failures to respond adequately to children on the basis of significant harm and in their best interests. Again and again we see that children known to social services are failed, children whose injuries are seen and documented are not protected. Instead of addressing the known failures of the state to use existing powers there is what can only be described as an obsession with the possibility of “invisible” and “hidden” children and on the expansion of state powers.

Sara was not hidden. She was a child who had been known to social services throughout her life and it is clear that there were numerous missed opportunities during that time. There was also a total breakdown in the response to the concerns raised due to the bruising shortly before she died, that she was suffering significant harm.

The failure to respond at this point of need is described in the safeguarding practice review. It is shown to be systemic, endemic and moreover not unique to Surrey local authority. In spite of this recommendations not only fail to adequately address these failures but would further exacerbate them by increasing pressures on teams already at breaking point.

Dysfunctional practice

The review describes significant time pressures and impact on practice with a “focus on speedy throughput”. Tight timescales and volume of referrals meaning that there was “only a superficial analysis of known information”. It is clear that this was ongoing, with managers explaining that while in theory more time could be requested for a case that “the relentless day to day need to process requests for support meant that in practice social workers would be unlikely to request additional time”.

The review details a significant disconnect between official policy and the day-to-day functioning of the team, to which senior managers were seemingly blind. While police checks were intended to be standard practice with such referrals, the practice of the team was only to do so when there were direct allegations made against an adult. Non accidental injury should have triggered a strategy meeting from which a s47 investigation would likely have been decided. Instead team culture was a “proportionate approach” to requesting such checks, with the other steps then not being triggered. The review makes clear that this is not unique to Surrey but instead is common across many areas.

This is a description of a system at breaking point. Children known to be suffering or at risk of significant harm will continue to be failed if this is allowed to continue.

What is to be done to achieve change? A first vital step is to reject the false narrative of hidden children. A second is that we must insist on action to address the twin drivers of this tsunami of need and overwhelming numbers of referrals. The growing inequality, levels of poverty in conjunction with ongoing cuts to public sector funding resulting in loss of vital support and services. The evidenced shift of local authorities away from providing the support that families need and ask for and instead to investigating them puts further pressure on social work teams.

While addressing the drivers of this dangerous reality continues to be politically unpopular – with the focus firmly on expanding state oversight and power – it is vital that we continue to speak up because this is the gaping hole through which children like Sara fall.

Child Safeguarding Practice Review – Sara Sharif 

See also:

VCF Briefing on Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 

VCF statement following verdict into the tragic death of Sara Sharif