The SCIE Learning Together systems model

The SCIE Learning Together systems model has been used in a number of serious case reviews to identify issues for consideration with regards to identifying themes for learning (Austin and Johnson, 2013; Maddocks, 2013; Charlton, 2013). The SCIE model uses learning from an individual case to provide a ‘window on the system’ into how well the local multi-agency safeguarding systems are operating (Austin and Johnson, 2015). More specifically, the model helps in identifying and analysing what happened, but most importantly, why things happened the way they did (SCIE, 2012). The systems approach was recommended in The Munro Child Protection Review for adoption and for application in Local Children Safeguarding Board (LCSB) Serious Case Reviews because it promotes the exercise of professional judgement (Munro, 2011). In Serious Case Reviews the SCIE systems model is commonly used to identify factors in the work environment which support good practice, and those that create unsafe conditions in which poor safeguarding practice is more likely to occur (SCIE, 2012).

Further consideration has been given to this model as the government has recently announced that it will scrap local LSCB Serious Case Reviews and

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replace them with a centralised framework based on a mixture of national and local reviews (Department for Education, 2016). The belief is that this will bring greater consistency as detailed in the Children and Social Work Bill [HL] 2016-17 (Department for Education, 2016). The proposed changes seem to relate to the level where serious case reviews will be undertaken rather than a rejection of the systems model in the application of practice. Using the SCIE systems model, people and processes, through their interaction, jointly create the system, which includes all the possible variables that make up the workplace and influence the efforts of frontline workers in their engagement with families. Practically, when the SCIE model is applied to Serious Case Reviews, the key themes for learning from the review and recommendations are categorised and analysed into six broad categories:

 Innate human biases (cognitive and emotional);  Family-professional interaction

 Responses to incidents  Longer term work  Tools

 Management systems

While there may be overlaps between these categories, on a case by case review basis, themes from Serious Case Reviews that were undertaken tended to be limited only to some of the categories and not all of them (SCIE, 2012). Through the categorisation, at one level, the SCIE model contributes to the systematic identification of these themes, yet on the other it contributes to their systemic understanding.

In a Serious Case Review by the Bradford Safeguarding Children Board following the death of a four-year-old baby Hamza, Maddocks (2013), cognitive influences

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and human biases during decision making emerged as one of the main themes, alongside concerns about tools for effective sharing and analysis of information. Cognitive influences and human biases relate to developing mind sets during decision making that are open to fresh or different information. Maddocks (2013) makes a crucial point stating that repeated exposure of professionals to intractable and longer term problems, can contribute to desensitisation and normalisation in their responses. In the same review by Maddocks (2013), child protection incidents were viewed and responded to in isolation and failing to identify patterns that represent harm to children, resulting in failure to identify the systemic patterns that represented harm to children. Positive family-professional interaction was exemplified in the relationship developed between C's mother and the Family Nurse Partnership in a serious case review for Child C and Child C’s sibling (Bracknell Forest Local Safeguarding Children Board and Ohdedar, 2016).

Difficult family-professional interaction, on the other hand, were evidenced in a Serious Case Review for Child I in Lambeth, through identified hostile parental behaviour which distracted professionals from protecting the child (Griffin and Miller, 2015). Austin and Johnson (2016) in a Brighton and Hove Local Safeguarding Children Board’s Serious Case Review for Liam, a 7-week-old boy with a life-threatening injury to the head presented key findings using a systems model based typology. The review found that when responding to incidents there was lack of understanding of the relationship between maltreatment in childhood and the impact of this on parenthood. This meant that social workers did not adequately identify the risk that care leavers (young people who have experienced being looked after by the Local Authority) such as Liam’s mum might pose to their own or other children, yet they are left without the support they need as parents, and children can go unprotected (Austin and Johnson, 2016). With regard to the

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longer term work category the same review found that professionals did not always share all the relevant information nor regularly record the information in the appropriate case records.

In another Serious Case Review of child B1 in Manchester, Maddocks (2016) found that, with regard to responses to incidents and practice tools used, there were delays in follow-up to incidents, and was evidence of limited use of assessment tools or frameworks. Examples of concerns which could be viewed as falling into the management systems category included social work cases being held on a duty system with the work becoming task orientated with a lack of understanding of case history, analysis of risk and ownership of outcomes (Austin and Johnson, 2016). Overall, the SCIE model provides a structure for systematically identifying and systemically analysing and understanding themes which may emerge from a particular child protection case to inform the required learning.