Housing can have a significant impact on children’s safety and welfare. Housing services and providers often have a wealth of information about the families they support, including any potential safeguarding or child protection concerns.
This briefing sets out learning from a sample of case reviews published by local safeguarding partnerships between 2020 and 2023 where practice issues related to housing were identified.
Case reviews highlighted that housing professionals sometimes struggled to identify safeguarding concerns and recognise how families’ living circumstances can interact with other harms children may be experiencing. They also identified that the role of housing was sometimes overlooked in multi-agency conversations.
The learning from these reviews highlights that housing professionals should be able to:
- understand their responsibility to recognise and respond to safeguarding and child protection concerns, even if the accommodation itself poses no issues
- work effectively with other agencies and actively share their knowledge about families
- consider the needs of the whole family and the role of the local area in meeting those needs.
