Lambeth review

The Home Office to develop national policy and guidance to assist agencies in working with victims of domestic abuse who are in the country illegally and are not covered by existing guidance.

Safer Lambeth are recommended not to publish this review because in the case of both incidents the young child of each relationship was present and witnessed the respective attacks. Both children are still young and the case received national publicity both at the time of the murder and attempted murder and the eventual sentencing. It is not thought it would be possible to anonymise the review sufficiently to prevent identification whilst still retaining any meaningful information.

Refer this review to the Lambeth Local Safeguarding Children’s Board to consider the concerns about child welfare and protection arising from this review and the C&YPS and G&St T services in particular.

The Community Safety Partnership to review the training available to its member organisations about current policy and guidance in respect of domestic abuse and people subject to immigration controls.

Any agency in this review check and correct factually incorrect information identified in this report held in relation to the victim (in particular but not exclusively LPT, C&YPS. G&St T).

Review cultural/systemic issues around the functioning of its “No Recourse to Public Funds” team and address the findings.

Audit the knowledge and understanding of domestic abuse and its implications for practice across the whole service and act on the findings.

As part of her on going professional development as she trains to be a probation officer OM1 should be given guidance in how and why to select and present material for inclusion in case records.

Staff of London Probation Trust should be reminded about where to find advice about dealing with immigration and other foreign national offender issues. Consideration should be given to providing refresher training to middle managers on key immigration case management issues and policy and procedure changes.

London Probation Trust’s assistant chief officer for Lambeth should satisfy himself that the information supplied by social services to probation contains sufficient information.

The findings of this report should be shared with the Lead on Foreign National Offenders, Diversity Team, London Probation Trust and National Advisor to the National Offender Management Service on Equality Rights and Decency (Foreign National Offenders). He should consider how to advise UKBA about the weaknesses in their practice identified in this report and how to ensure it is not repeated in relation to future cases.

Domestic violence risk assessment training / update for Health Visitors.

Specifically review the training requirements and competencies of HV4 and the CNN

An update for Health Visitors to include: information and signposting about resources for families with no recourse to public funds.

Recirculate and discuss Social Care threshold document

Re-emphasis on Health Visiting standards to include:
 Use of assessment framework.
 Risk assessment
 Escalation process to managers and safeguarding
team when cases are not progressing
 Evaluate the scope and effectiveness of the lead
Health Visitor role in relation to domestic abuse.
 Review scope of CNN roles and areas of delegation.
 Evaluate effectiveness of child protection supervision
to determine the extent that actions proposed are being
carried out in a timely manner

The use of DV risk matrix to be reiterated to managers and social workers and DV training to be mandatory for all social workers /managers and included in inductions.

The need for managers to ensure all checks need to be completed and police intelligence needs to be confirmed / explored prior to a decision to close a case and recording the rationale if not completed.

The NRTPF‘s team to ensure all assessments are holistic, take account of all information known or recorded ,and do not have a narrow focus ,but ensure they review safeguarding concerns over and above the financial issues.

The need for assessments to be reviewed in light of new information/changing circumstances and historical information to ensure any risks is re-assessed.

All DV cases should be discussed with the DV specialist or have a consultation with Child Protection Chairs.