Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel issues plan to enhance response to neglect, including by reviewing definition, examining evidence base for practice tools and providing guidance to practitioners on cases when parents deny consent.
An “ambiguous” definition of neglect and high thresholds are delaying interventions to protect children, leading to increased harm, safeguarding leaders have warned.
Even when neglect is identified, practitioners struggle to act without parental consent, assessments are often inadequate and interventions are generic and short-term, found a thematic analysis by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.
On the back of the review, the panel issued an action plan to improve responses to neglect, including by reviewing the statutory definition, examining the evidence base for practice tools and providing guidance to practitioners on responding to a lack of parental consent.
Neglect the most prevalent form of child harm
Neglect is the most prevalent form of harm to children, accounting for half of child protection plans in England as of 31 March 2025 and present in 60% of serious cases reviewed by local safeguarding partnerships in 2024-25 and submitted to the panel.
However, the panel said neglect was “persistently under-recognised and under-researched”.
Its report was based on a literature review and a study of 100 rapid reviews where neglect was a significant factor submitted from 2019-23, including 34 that were the subject of more in-depth local child safeguarding practice reviews.
It examined five of these in particular detail, through group interviews with 37 practitioners who had worked with the children and families concerned, meetings with 60 senior managers, roundtable discussions with 40 experts and a webinar with 25 independent case reviewers.
In addition, it interviewed two children who had experienced neglect and one parent, and held meetings with 10 parents from family advocacy groups.
Ambiguous definition leads to ‘missed opportunities’
The review found that the definition of neglect in England, set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children, was ambiguous, leading to “inconsistent thresholds, delayed interventions, and missed opportunities to safeguard children”.
The definition of neglect in England
Working Together to Safeguard Children states: “Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development.
“Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to: provide adequate food, clothing, and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment); protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger; ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate caregivers); ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment; provide suitable education.
“It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.”
The definition specifies that neglect involves the “persistent” failure to meet a child’s needs, likely resulting in “serious impairment” of their health or development.
These terms lacked clear meaning, said the panel, with practitioners interviewed for the report uncertain of how to assess the seriousness of impairment or persistence.
‘High thresholds delaying interventions’
However, the report also questioned the content of the definition and suggested that it contributed to high thresholds for intervention.
Practitioners took a “wait and see” approach to responding to neglect, reflecting the need for a “persistent failure” to meet need. As a result early signs, such as inconsistent supervision or emotional withdrawal, were often missed and intervention was delayed until harm escalated.
It added that the focus on “serious impairment” of health or development prioritised physical over emotional or developmental harm.
The panel also said the specific examples of neglect in Working Together – such as failing to provide adequate food, shelter or access to medical care or treatment – were “narrow”. As a result, other forms of harm, such as dental neglect, unsafe sleeping and denial of mental health care were overlooked.
Reluctance to name neglect
While practitioners professed confidence in identifying neglect, the report found there was a reluctance to name neglect, especially when it appeared unintentional or linked to poverty or parental vulnerability.
Instead, practitioners used terms such as “unsafe sleeping practices” or “poor home conditions”, which sometimes led to the child’s lived experience being obscured or concerns being dismissed as isolated or minor.
Practitioners’ hesitation to label situations as neglect when families were in poverty could hinder them having honest conversations with parents and undermine safeguarding responses, the panel added.
The report stressed that only some children in poverty were neglected, while neglect also occurred in affluent families, adding that practitioners needed to focus on parents’ responsiveness to children’s needs, regardless of resources.
Guidance on responding to neglect
For comprehensive and up-to-date guidance on responding to neglect, check out Community Care Inform’s knowledge and practice hub on the issue.
Authored by David Wilkins, professor of social work at Cardiff University, it includes guidance on risk assessment, understanding the impact of neglect on children, working with families where neglect is a concern and presenting evidence of neglect in court.
The neglect hub is open to all subscribers to CC Inform Children.
The challenge of parents denying consent to act
A significant challenge that practitioners faced was the need for parents to consent to a family help assessment or resulting support and services.
Where this was denied, agencies often failed to act until the threshold for a child protection enquiry – that the child was reasonably suspected to be suffering, or likely to suffer significant harm – was reached, by which time the situation may have deteriorated significantly.
However, while practitioners felt constrained in these circumstances, the panel found “limited evidence of efforts to understand why parents did not accept services, how their worries or fears could be addressed, and how to engage with them as partners to address their concerns”.
Assessments ‘frequently inconsistent and narrow’
When assessment were carried out, they were “frequently inconsistent, overly narrow, and [failed] to capture the full complexity of children’s lives”, limiting practitioners’ ability understand the nature and impact of neglect and how best to respond, said the panel.
Assessments focused disproportionately on children’s behaviour – for example, how often they were late for school – without consideration of parental responsibility.
When parental issues – such as mental health or domestic abuse – were identified, assessments frequently failed to analyse how these affected parenting ability and capacity to change.
Despite Working Together emphasising the importance of hearing from children, their voices were often absent from assessments, with children not always seen alone or in safe space, and pre-verbal children and those with communication needs particularly overlooked.
Another consistent theme from the case reviews studied was the lack of observation of parent-child interactions, despite these being “crucial for understanding attachment, emotional availability, and the quality of care”.
Assessments were also “too often” conducted from a single-agency perspective, leading to a failure to build a full picture of the child’s
circumstances. Chronologies were often absent or limited to one agency’s perspective, meaning patterns of neglect over time were missed.
Underuse of neglect tools and frameworks
Despite the existence of dedicated assessment tools for neglect, such as the Graded Care Profile 2 (NSPCC/Dr Srivastava) and the Quality of Care Assessment Tool (Hounslow Safeguarding Children Partnership/Jane Wiffin), these were rarely used.
The panel said these tools helped practitioners assess quality of care across key domains, such as physical, emotional, developmental, and safety. They also enabled them to evaluate parenting against normal expectations and could support conversations with parents about areas for improvement.
Practitioners reported several barriers to using them, including a lack of training or familiarity, time constraints – with some perceiving them as time consuming – unclear expectations of how and when to use them and the tools not being integrated into local procedures.
Where they were used, the tools were often applied by a single agency, limiting their effectiveness, the panel added.
Support for neglect ‘generic and short-lived’
When families did receive support for neglect, interventions were often generic, lacking specificity or adaptation to children’s developmental stages, the panel said.
For example, adolescents were sometimes offered the same support as younger children, despite facing distinct risks such as exploitation or disengagement from education.
There was also limited attention paid to parent-child interactions or family dynamics, with plans focusing on practical tasks – such as cleaning or attending appointments – without considering whether these were sustainable or meaningful for the child.
Another recurring theme was a tendency to close cases prematurely, with limited improvements interpreted as signs of success and little follow-up to see if children’s circumstances had improved.
The panel added: “Practitioners described feeling pressured to close cases due to high workloads, particularly in social care. This contributed to a cycle of short-term engagement, repeated referrals, and escalating concerns, with children’s situations deteriorating
over time.”
The panel’s action plan for neglect
On the back of the report, the panel has issued an action plan to improve agencies’ response to neglect, on which it has pledged to work with government departments and other partners. This includes:
- Reviewing the definition of neglect in Working Together to address ambiguity around terms like “persistence” and “serious impairment and ensure they reflect cumulative harm and emotional neglect, and to support the development of a shared national understanding of neglect across all agencies.
- A review of the evidence base for existing neglect-related tools, to examine their effectiveness in supporting practitioners to identify, assess and respond to neglect and improving practice and outcomes for children, with consideration also given to the case for a single national multi-agency tool.
- Strengthening statutory guidance to improve practitioners’ understanding of how to work where there is a lack of consent, including to reduce stigma and support parental engagement, and of what significant harm looks like in the context of neglect.
- Encouraging a stronger focus on the child’s daily lived experience in all neglect assessments.
The panel also said it would work with safeguarding partnerships to highlight and disseminate learning from the thematic analysis, including through a new neglect hub on its website.
