The Whitefield Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review: what it says, what it – very regrettably – overlooks, and why it fails

This post looks in some detail at the recently published Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) regarding the historic child abuse at Whitefield School (or, to give it its formal title ‘Learning from the past: The use of restrictive practices, including seclusion, in a school for children with additional needs’).

First, a couple of observations about how the LCSPR was set up and then actioned.

There has been some confusion about timings, but the following is the current best guess. LBWF and partners decided to set up the LCSPR in August 2024; the then Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, announced their decision publicly three months later; and the LCSPR was commissioned in April 2025.

The official guidance is that LCSPRs should take six months to complete, but this one took 14 months.

Quite what explains such erratic progress is anybody’s guess. Some have speculated that, fearing reputational damage, LBWF didn’t want the LCSPR to be published until after the local elections in May this year.

Perhaps a more credible reason for the second of the two delays, though, is that LBWF and partners, without any public acknowledgement, seem to have changed the team actually responsible for researching and writing the LCSPR in mid-course.

It was initially stated that the LCSPR would be led by Donna Ohdedar, ‘Independent Reviewer’, assisted by the LBWF Director of Corporate Education, the MPS DS Serious Review Crime Group Review Officer, and the NHS NEL ICB Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children.

However, as its front cover shows, the LCSPR’s authors are in fact Sarah Holton (of SHF Safeguarding Consultancy Ltd., ex senior social worker) ‘with’ Tina Harvey (ex-Headteacher and SEND expert), and there is no reference to Ms. Ohdedar or the other members of her team at all.

It would appear, then, that the production of the LSCPR has been far from straightforward.

Turning to the more important matter of the LCSPR’s contents, the following provides an itemised summary of, first, its findings, and, second, its failings.

1. Findings about Whitefield School

Closely mirroring the January 2017 Ofsted report, the LCSPR is highly critical of Whitefield, concluding that, though it had the required policies on paper, these were ignored in practice, and also citing, for example, its poor management and inadequate record keeping.

2. Findings about the authorities, including LBWF

2.1. Weaknesses in multi-agency working

The weakness of multi-agency working is referenced throughout, and summarised thus:

‘Fragmented oversight across education, safeguarding, health and SEND systems reduced information sharing, professional challenge, and coordinated scrutiny, not allowing harmful practice to be questioned and therefore was left unchallenged across the safeguarding system. Reliance on school self-reporting, without effective multi-agency oversight, proved insufficient as a safeguard for children within what many agencies have since described as a “closed” institutional environment. This contributed to a degree of multi-agency systemic complicity in the continuation of poor practice, predominately characterised by a lack of professional curiosity regarding the experiences of the children when placed in the room’ [emphasis added].

2.2. The wrong focus

The LCDPR repeatedly notes that there was too much focus on ‘compliance, improvement planning, and governance arrangements’, and too little on ‘exploring whether children had experienced harm’.

2.3. A lack of curiosity

The LCSPR finds that safeguarding staff sometimes displayed insufficient ‘professional scepticism’.

A striking example is recounted in some detail.

In the immediate aftermath of the January 2017 Ofsted report, a LBWF team including ‘senior leaders from education and children’s social care’ visited Whitefield, and completed a review, which included reference to the fact that they saw CCTV cameras on the school’s premises.

The LCSPR comments:

‘However, that review relied largely on information provided by the school, including an indication that CCTV was used as a real-time observation tool rather than retained as a formal record. As a result, the review team did not examine CCTV footage, which was later found to be significant. By the time of the visit, the school had ceased using the calming rooms, reducing the visibility of the practices that had prompted concern and contributing to a perception that immediate safeguarding risks had been addressed. As a result, no Section 47 child protection enquiry or police referral was initiated. The information available at the time appears to have been viewed primarily through a regulatory and school improvement lens, rather than as a potential child protection matter which meant that any impact or harm to the children was missed.’

The CCTV footage certainly was ‘significant’, to put it mildly, because it shows instances of appalling violence against children.

2.4 Issues with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and Education, Health, and Care (EHC) plans

In the period under review (and just as now) local authorities had responsibility for putting together SEN statements and EHCs, and making sure they were reviewed annually.

The LCSPR states ‘The overwhelming majority of children who entered the school’ had one or other of these certifications.

But it then suggests that there were ‘limited opportunities at that time’ for SEN systems and EHC processes ‘to identify and respond to safeguarding concerns relating to behaviour management and restrictive practices within schools’ because the systems and processes were ‘insufficiently integrated’.

Why the systems and processes were ‘insufficiently integrated’ is unexplained.

In addition to this issue, the LCSPR is critical of the arrangements for reviewing ‘Statements of SEN and/or EHCPs’, finding  ‘the quality of these reviews’ to be variable’, and adding:

 ‘Multi-agency participation was often limited or absent, resulting in missed opportunities to consider repeated incidents involving restrictive practices, assess the impact on children and young people, and evaluate whether provision remained appropriate to meet their needs’ [emphasis added].

It’s disappointing that the LCSPR does not provide any relevant numbers here. In the period 2014-17, how many Whitefield children were having their SEN and EHCs reviewed on an annual basis? And how many reviews did the LCSPR team look at to reach its conclusion about their quality? There is no indication.

It is also disappointing that the LCSPR did not consider these matters from a legal point of view.

The key document at the time (which is cited in the LCSPR) is the DfE and DoH Special educational needs and disability code of practice: 0 to 25 years (January 2015) and amongst other things, this states:

 ‘EHC plans… must be reviewed by the local authority as a minimum every 12 months. Reviews must focus on the child or young person’s progress towards achieving the outcomes specified in the EHC plan’ [emphasis in the original];

and

‘The following requirements apply to reviews where a child or young person attends a school or other institution: the child’s parents or young person, a representative of the school or other institution attended, a local authority SEN officer, a health service representative and a local authority social care representative must be invited and given at least two weeks’ notice’ [emphasis in the original].

So why the LCSPR does not include a discussion about whether these requirements were being upheld is surprising to say the least.

3. Findings about LBWF and the British Institute of Learning Disabilities (BILD)

It’s been known for some time that the blue-chip BILD provided Whitefield with training materials from around 2012 onwards, and in 2016 organised a conference for local schools at which the Whitefield contingent walked out (something that is still remembered today).

However, the LCSPR adds some further details:

‘Between 2016 and 2017, a number of concerns were raised regarding the use of seclusion and restrictive practices at the school, presenting several opportunities for greater external scrutiny and challenge. In July 2016, an independent review of local settings by the British Institute for [sic] Learning Disabilities…commissioned by the local authority, identified concerns about the repeated use of calming rooms in the school, particularly for a small number of pupils, and recommended a review of behaviour support arrangements. Following threatened legal challenge from the academy to the local authority, the report was withdrawn and the findings regarding the use of the rooms was lost, significantly reducing opportunities for wider safeguarding oversight and consideration until the Ofsted inspection six months later’.

A footnote adds: ‘the threatened legal action was identified during the police investigation via email exchanges between the school and the local authority and through supporting material and interviews with BILD’.

All of this begs questions, principally why has nothing been said about this in public before; why did LBWF back down; and why were BILD’s findings regarding the use of the calming rooms ‘lost’?

4. Failings: what the LCSPR overlooks

4.1 Problems about evidence

LBWF has long required all schools in Waltham Forest to annually complete a detailed safeguarding audit, using a pro forma which it supplies. These audits are referred to as Section 11s, after the paragraph in the 2004 legislation which ultimately sanctions them.

It’s obvious that Section 11s should give insights into what happened at Whitefield.

 But asked recently under the Freedom of Information Act for Whitefield’s 2014-17 Section 11s, LBWF states that it has not kept them, because they are the school’s responsibility.

For its part, however, Whitefield insists that the documents always have been ‘owned…by the host LA [local authority]’.

How could there be such a pronounced difference of opinion?

Second, LBWF cannot say, for the years 2014-16, how many referrals about Whitefield were made to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), the first stop for all matters about child safety, due to ‘the administrative process within which LADO referrals were recorded’.

It’s strange that the LCSPR is silent about both matters.

4.2 A joint LBWF and police investigation that went nowhere

The LCSPR reports that in May 2021, LBWF and the police set up a ‘joint investigation’ into ‘organised and complex abuse’ at Whitefield under the London Safeguarding Children Procedure, and claims that this provided ‘strategic leadership’, and ‘supported coordinated multi-agency action’, vague formulations at best .

But the LCSPR does not add a significant detail which is, as LBWF has admitted, that this ‘investigation’ produced ‘no written report’, and ‘no outcomes reports/findings presented to councillors’.

Why not?

4.3 LBWF and Whitefield’s financial links

The LCSPR fails to mention that throughout this period LBWF and Whitefield had close financial relations.

The facts are striking. From 2014 to 2024, LBWF channelled millions of pounds of government money to Whitefield, specifically grant funding from, first, the Education Funding Agency’s Targeted Basic Needs Programme, and later the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Moreover, and this needs to be underlined, LBWF wasn’t acting here as just a convenient conduit, but in both cases was required to be the administrator, which inevitably meant working closely with Whitefield, for example on monitoring expenditure.

The issue that arises, therefore, is whether in the course of these interactions, particularly during and shortly after 2014-17, LBWF staff ever came across evidence of child abuse, and if they did, what then transpired.

Again, it’s difficult to understand why the LCSPR doesn’t even seem to know about these financial flows, never mind comment about their possible significance.

4.4 Lack of Scrutiny

The LBWF Children and Families Scrutiny Committee (CFSC), made up of rank and file councillors, has responsibility for ‘special educational needs and disabilities’, and on these matters is charged with holding the Town Hall leadership to account.

It might be thought, then, that at some point after 2016, the CFSC must have discussed Whitefield.

But the reality is that though between April 2016 and February 2024, the CFSC met no less than 40 times, according to its published minutes it failed to discuss Whitefield even once.

And when in May 2024, the CFSC finally did turn to the abuse at the school (see links below) and a constituent member, Cllr. Jonathan O’Dea, used the opportunity to press for a referral to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, his words were not included in the minutes, and Cllr. O’Dea had to fight to get them reinstated, which they were, though only partly.

It’s quite possible that had the CFSC been involved more, some of the weaknesses and failures identified by the LCSPR would have been nipped in the bud.

Yet the LCSPR again says nothing about any of this.

4.5 Context 

In the period 2014-21, Ofsted several times warned LBWF (including its then Deputy Chief Executive Families, Ms. Linzi Roberts-Egan) about the poor quality of all its EHC plans, and Ofsted also considered that LBWF was slower in completing the required number of plans than neighbouring boroughs.

In addition, during 2020-21, there were four other child safeguarding cases where LBWF was found to be at fault (see links below), suggesting that it may have had systemic problems, and Whitefield was not a one off.

Yet, once again, these points are overlooked.

Conclusion

The LCSPR rightly finds that primary responsibility for what happened at Whitefield lies with the perpetrators: staff at the school.

But it also finds that the safeguarding agencies failed to provide oversight, and with devastating consequences: in the jargon that is used, ‘there was a degree of multi-agency systemic complicity in the continuation of poor practice’.

What the LSCPR doesn’t explain, though, is why ‘systemic complicity’ occurred.

Why was there so much focus on ‘compliance, improvement planning, and governance arrangements’, and so little on ‘exploring whether children had experienced harm’? Why did staff lack ‘professional scepticism’, accepting the school’s version of events without demure? Why was the law not respected (for instance over SEN and EHC certifications)?

In the LCSPR’s telling, all these things just happened.

But that is far from the truth.

For at every turn there were decisions to be made about safeguarding, decisions taken, for better or worse, by people on the front line, by people in middle management, and by people in leadership positions, who had overall responsibility for their organisations.

And while the LCSPR has the specific flaws that have been itemised in the preceding paragraphs, its greatest failure is that it avoids examining the mechanics of this decision-making.

It’s almost as if someone somewhere had said: you can go so far, but no further.

Which is worrying, very worrying.

The words of the coroner in the recent Tracey Turnell case are highly relevant here:

‘“I sit as a coroner and hear, on a day-to-day basis, about reflection, changes of procedure, changes of process – but unless and until somebody actually feels the flames at their feet about the consequences of their actions or inactions, not a great deal changes”’.