After a child dies or is seriously injured and abuse or neglect is thought to be involved, a serious case review (SCR) is carried out.

This aims to find out what went wrong and why, and how services can be improved to prevent it happening again.

Within the city, learning from these national SCRs has been shared with more than 100 frontline professionals. This is part of the practical work that the Brighton and Hove Local Safeguarding Children Board carries out to make sure all children and young people are protected from abuse or neglect.

The idea is to see how different professions can learn from them in a way that is useful.

Several key themes have emerged including the need for injuries/bruises to babies under six months to be viewed as suspicious.

The Argus headline last week was ‘All baby bruises to be treated as suspicious’. A comment piece asked: Are we at risk of wrapping children, who may be bound to get bumps and scrapes from time to time, in cotton wool – or is it better to be safe than sorry?

The fact is that babies are the most vulnerable of all children. It’s precisely because they are so dependent and not yet able to walk or crawl that the cause of bruising in babies under six months should be questioned. In its advice the NSPCC states: ‘Bruising in a baby who is not yet crawling, and therefore has no independent mobility, is very unusual.”

Not all investigations result in someone being found to have abused a child but the public would expect agencies to at the very least enquire into what had happened.

There is already an established Bruise Pathway in place developed by Brighton and Hove Local Safeguarding Children’s Board with health colleagues. This highlights what professionals should do when they see a bruise on a baby under six months old. It’s vital we think the unthinkable and learn from past mistakes.

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Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here