When Concerns Keep Rumbling: Neglect, Thresholds and Professional Challenge

Neglect is one of those safeguarding issues that most professionals feel familiar with. It appears regularly within safeguarding training, forms part of statutory guidance, and features prominently in child protection plans and serious case reviews. Despite this, in our consultancy work we see that it continues to be one of the safeguarding concerns that DSLs most frequently describe as challenging to manage. 

What makes neglect particularly difficult is that concerns rarely present in a way that allows for easy decision-making. Schools often find themselves:

• Holding information over extended periods of time
• Recording concerns
• Offering support
• Engaging with families 
• Making referrals
  

However, schools still feel uncertain about whether enough is being done to improve a child's day-to-day experience. 

Earlier this year, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel published Why Did It Take So Long to Respond? Child Neglect: A Thematic Analysis. It does not focus on the recognition of neglect, but on why responses were delayed even when concerns were visible. One of the consistent messages throughout the report is that practitioners identify indicators of neglect but struggle to secure timely and effective intervention because neglect rarely presents as a single event. Instead, it develops over time through a series of concerns that may appear relatively low level when viewed individually but become much more significant when considered collectively. 

Safeguarding Audit: Missed Early Intervention

A school's safeguarding audit for a local authority looked at how legacy neglect cases were assessed and managed. There were often multiple referrals from education settings, concerns that had been recorded over significant periods of time and a sense of frustration that opportunities for early intervention had been missed. There was uncertainty around thresholds, challenges in securing assessments and a lack of clarity regarding why particular decisions had been made.

Schools are often in a unique position when it comes to neglect. Unlike many services that see children periodically, schools see children regularly and over long periods of time. This means they frequently become aware of patterns before anyone else.

Schools and Trusts will notice:

• Attendance concerns
• Changes in presentation
• Missed appointments
• Parental disengagement
• Repeated requests for support  
  

This all contributes to the gradual accumulation of information that starts to create a picture of a child's lived experience. The difficulty is often not recognising that picture. The difficulty is evidencing it in a way that captures cumulative harm and secures the right response. 

The thematic analysis from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel highlights that children with SEND can be particularly vulnerable to neglect, whilst at the same time being more likely to have their experiences misunderstood, minimised or attributed to their additional needs. 

Most DSLs will have encountered situations where concerns appear to sit comfortably within a child's diagnosis, health needs or identified difficulties. Attendance concerns may be explained through anxiety, behavioural difficulties may be viewed through the lens of SEND, communication challenges may be linked to a child's needs and developmental concerns may be attributed to an existing diagnosis. 

The challenge is that these explanations are often not wrong. The difficulty arises when they become the end of the conversation rather than the starting point for further professional curiosity. 

One of the key messages from the thematic analysis is that professionals need to understand the interaction between a child's needs and the care they receive. Children with SEND often require additional input from the adults around them, including:

• Greater levels of supervision
• Consistent support from health professionals
• Increased advocacy
• A coordinated approach to ensuring that appointments, interventions and specialist advice are followed through

As a result, neglect can have a particularly significant impact because unmet needs may affect a child who is already reliant upon additional support to access positive outcomes.

The report makes an observation that is particularly important for safeguarding professionals to reflect on. It suggests that some children with disabilities may receive what appears to be "good enough" parenting when judged against the needs of a typically developing child, but not when considered against their own individual needs. Put simply, a standard of care that may be adequate for one child may be wholly inadequate for another. 

This challenges us to move beyond simply asking whether a child's basic needs are being met and instead consider whether their individual needs are being met. Whilst that distinction may appear subtle, it can completely change how we understand a family's circumstances. 

Knowing the Difference Between SEND Needs and Neglect

A family had three children, all of whom had SEND, with the eldest child having significant complex needs and an EHCP. Over a prolonged period, school had gathered concerns relating to attendance, hygiene, untreated injuries, dental health and low weight. On the surface, the parent was often able to explain away our concerns. Attendance was linked to anxiety, difficulties with hygiene were attributed to additional needs, dental issues were explained through refusal to engage, and medical concerns were discussed within the context of the child's diagnoses. However, as professionals, our role is not simply to consider whether an explanation exists. Our role is to consider what impact those circumstances are having on the child. 

As the concerns accumulated, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that all three children remained significantly underweight, attendance was persistently poor and impacting their social and academic wellbeing, and concerns about health and presentation continued despite support and intervention. The most important shift in professional thinking occurred when conversations moved away from explaining individual concerns and towards understanding the children's overall lived experience. 

That is a theme which appears repeatedly throughout the thematic analysis, and it’s particularly important for children with SEND because they may be less able to communicate concerns directly. Some children may struggle to articulate their experiences, whilst others communicate distress through their behaviour, presentation or emotional responses. In many cases, they rely heavily on the adults around them to recognise when something is not right. 

Professional Curiosity

We often hear the term professional curiosity used in safeguarding, but neglect perhaps demands a particular type of curiosity from professionals. It requires us to question our assumptions and consider whether we would be reaching the same conclusions if the child did not have an identified need. Or whether a diagnosis is explaining concerns without sufficient exploration of other possibilities. Most importantly, it requires us to think about the cumulative impact of concerns rather than viewing each issue in isolation. 

We have to bring the information together and consider the child’s lived experience as a whole. Children with SEND often have multiple professionals involved in their lives, with information spread across education, health, therapy services, specialist provision and, in some cases, social care. No single professional is likely to hold the entire picture. Schools are often uniquely placed to identify patterns because they are one of the few services with consistent contact over long periods of time. 

This is where effective recording and chronology building become so valuable. A single missed appointment, attendance concern or issue relating to presentation may not feel particularly significant when viewed alone. However, when the same concerns continue to appear across months or years, a chronology can reveal patterns that are much harder to see when information is considered as a series of isolated events. 

We need to ask ourselves if the support children with additional needs require is actually being provided and whether their needs are being met consistently enough to allow them to thrive. When we approach cases from that perspective, it often changes both the conversation and the conclusions we reach. 

Thresholds, Referrals and Cumulative Harm

One of the reasons neglect generates so much discussion amongst DSLs is because it rarely fits comfortably within safeguarding systems that are designed to assess levels of risk at a particular point in time.

Most neglect concerns don't emerge overnight or suddenly reach a moment where everything changes. Instead, they often develop gradually, with concerns accumulating over weeks, months and sometimes years. This can place schools in a difficult position because the pattern feels increasingly significant, whilst individual pieces of evidence can appear less compelling when viewed in isolation. 

One of the strongest themes we see from school audits is frustration around thresholds. Practitioners describe situations where concerns had been recorded over extended periods of time, multiple referrals had been submitted, and professionals remained worried about children's welfare, yet statutory assessment had not been initiated. They're often uncertainty about what additional evidence was required and, in some cases, very little feedback regarding why decisions had been made. 

That experience is reflected strongly within the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's thematic analysis. One of the recurring findings was the ambiguity that continues to surround neglect, particularly when practitioners are trying to understand what is meant by terms such as persistence or serious impairment. The report describes professionals feeling uncertain about how long concerns need to exist before intervention becomes appropriate and highlights the risk of neglect becoming viewed as something that must continue for a significant period before it is considered sufficiently serious.  

Schools are often seeing concerns develop in real time. A child's attendance begins to decline. Medical appointments are regularly missed. Parental engagement becomes increasingly inconsistent.  

We are all busy. Records are updated daily. Meetings take place. Referrals are submitted. Concerns are managed as they arise. In that environment, it can become surprisingly easy to focus on the issue directly in front of us rather than considering what the previous six months or even six years might tell us. This is perhaps where schools have one of the most significant contributions to make within the safeguarding system. 

Supervision can be a valuable tool for DSLs and safeguarding professionals to allow them that reflective space to navigate safeguarding challenges, maintain wellbeing and lead with confidence. Judicium offers a tailored Safeguarding Supervision Service, which you can learn more about here.

Educational settings are often uniquely positioned to identify patterns because they have regular contact with children over long periods of time. A social worker may become involved for a particular period. Health professionals may see a child at key developmental stages. Schools often have the advantage of continuity. So when we’re able to present a clear chronology, we are offering something much more powerful than a list of concerns. We’re demonstrating change over time, the impact of support put in place, showing patterns and trends, and ultimately evidencing cumulative harm. 

One of the difficulties, however, is that schools can sometimes underestimate the value of the information they hold. Attendance concerns, repeated lateness, persistent requests for practical support, poor engagement with school interventions and observations from staff can appear relatively mundane because they have become familiar. Yet when these concerns are considered alongside information from health, early help or social care, they often become more significant. 

The thematic analysis repeatedly highlights the importance of shared chronologies and notes that opportunities to recognise neglect were frequently missed because information remained fragmented across agencies. Reviews often found that individual professionals held concerns, but nobody had brought them together to create a coherent picture of the child's experience. 

Neglect assessment tools can play an important role. The thematic analysis identifies the underuse of frameworks such as Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2), despite evidence that they can support professional thinking, improve analysis and provide a shared language for discussing neglect. Tools on their own do not solve the problem, but they can help professionals move beyond instinct and concern towards evidence-based analysis. 

Ultimately, threshold decisions will always sit outside the control of schools. What remains within the control of schools is the quality of the evidence they provide, the clarity of the chronology they maintain and their ability to continue advocating for children whose needs remain unmet. 

Even when professionals recognise neglect and build a compelling picture of concern, intervention does not always progress in the way they would hope. This is one of the reasons neglect can feel so professionally exhausting. There is often no shortage of goodwill. Practitioners want to help. Agencies become involved. Meetings take place. Support is offered. Yet meaningful and sustained change can be difficult to achieve. 

The thematic analysis highlighted common barriers that contribute to this challenge.

When discussing neglect, there is often an assumption that parents who engage with professionals are less concerning than parents who do not. In reality, parent engagement exists on a spectrum, and participation does not always translate into change. Many DSLs will have worked with parents who attend meetings, express agreement with professional concerns and appear willing to engage with support. However, when actions are reviewed several weeks later, very little has actually changed for the child. 

Another barrier identified by the review panel relates to consent and early help processes. Many practitioners interviewed described feeling constrained when families declined support. Whilst consent remains an important principle within family support work, the report suggests that there has sometimes been an over-reliance on consent-based approaches without sufficient consideration of what repeated refusal might indicate about a family's willingness or ability to address concerns. This can create a sense of drift, with professionals continuing to hold concerns but feeling increasingly uncertain about how to progress them. 

The issue of normalising neglect is also raised in the thematic review, which I think is one of the most important concepts for DSLs to understand. When concerns exist for a prolonged period of time, there is a risk that they become familiar. What initially felt worrying to begin with starts to feel routine, and expectations gradually adjust. Schools can be particularly vulnerable to this because they are often supporting families over many years. Staff become familiar with patterns of attendance, presentation and engagement. They learn how to accommodate difficulties and, in many cases, provide compensatory care to ensure that children are safe and supported whilst in school. 

None of this is wrong. In fact, it reflects the commitment and compassion that exists within schools. The challenge is that compensatory care can sometimes mask the extent of the underlying concerns. 

The NSPCC's work on neglect highlights this issue clearly. Highlighting that as a result of the cost of living crisis, increasingly, schools find themselves providing food, clothing, hygiene products and emotional support to children experiencing significant adversity. These interventions are important and often necessary. However, they are often not recorded as part of the safeguarding chronology and may lead to a feeling that, with this support, the family are ‘coping’. 

Finally, we should acknowledge the broader context in which neglect sits. 

The thematic analysis recognises the impact of rising demand, resource pressures and the reduction in early intervention services. It also explores the complex relationship between poverty and neglect. As safeguarding professionals, we need to be able to hold both realities simultaneously. Families may be experiencing significant hardship. Structural disadvantage may absolutely be influencing family functioning. At the same time, some children living within those circumstances may also be experiencing neglect. The challenge is not deciding whether poverty exists; it is in ensuring that discussions about poverty do not prevent us from considering whether children's needs are being met. 

Perhaps the most consistent message running throughout the national learning is that neglect requires persistence, curiosity and a willingness to keep looking beneath the surface. The barriers are real, and many sit beyond the influence of individual schools. However, understanding them helps explain why neglect cases can feel so complex and why professional challenge remains such an important part of safeguarding practice. 

But there will be some cases where DSLs will feel that they have submitted appropriate supportive evidence of neglect concerns, and perhaps feel that they are not being heard by external agencies. Can you talk us through what they should do in this instance? Is it just about submitting another referral? 

Professional Challenge: What Happens When Concerns Aren't Resolved?