The big three-yearly report on safeguarding in England by the various public sector inspectorates - Ofsted, CSCI etc - has identified serious problems in the conduct of serious case reviews. Since April 2007, of 36 reviews received by Ofsted, a quarter were inadequate - including because of an insufficient focus on the child and lack of rigour in challenging practice shortcomings.

The report also revealed big geographical variations in actually carrying out SCRs, which were not fully explained by variations in the number of child deaths in an area. A quarter of local safeguarding children boards didn't carry out any from April 2006-October 2007, and apparently resources and potential media interest have been cited as reasons some have not carried them out.

I found those figures pretty shocking and was just wondering whether anyone knew of problems with SCRs - either their quality or agencies' readiness to carry them out - in their areas.