Sadly, there are many examples of situations where services have failed to protect a child from significant harm. When these occur, there is rarely a single cause. Rather it is a series of problems that combine and each contribute to the failure.

When we refer to “safeguarding systems failures”, we are referring either to a major breach within an organisation, for E.g. a breakdown in recruitment processes that allowed a person on the sex offender’s register to obtain a position working with children or young people, or a systemic failure across multiple organisations that resulted in harm to a child.

This does not refer to a genuine mistake, but rather to a systemic problem that places children or young people at risk of significant harm.