We are carrying out a review of how health services keep children safe and contribute to promoting the health and wellbeing of looked after children and care leavers.
This review programme began in September 2013 and focuses on:
- Evaluating the quality and impact of local health arrangements for safeguarding children.
- Improving healthcare for children who are looked after.
What are we looking at?
Our inspections look at the quality and effectiveness of the arrangements that health care services have made to ensure children are safeguarded and how health services promote the health and wellbeing of looked after children and care leavers.
We inspect health services within local authority areas in England and case track individual children in each area.
We prioritise our inspections based on the identified risk within the health services in those areas and we visit at short notice.
We conduct this work under Section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, so we are able to review:
- all aspects of the provision of healthcare.
- exercise of function of NHS England.
Results of our review
We publish a report for each local area we inspect. These provide a commentary on our findings and recommendations for improvement.
Our first national report, 'Not seen, not heard' (July 2016) brings together findings from the first 50 reviews.