Guidance on LADO role to be issued for consultation in 2025

Guidance on the performance of the local authority designated officer role will be issued for consultation in 2025, the education secretary has confirmed.

The news came in a letter from Bridget Phillipson to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel updating on the government’s response to the panel’s inquiry into the abuse of children, most of whom were autistic and had learning disabilities, in three residential special schools registered as children’s homes from 2018-21.

That review found that the LADO function in Doncaster, where the settings, run by the Hesley Group, were, did not effectively collate information from different sources to analyse patterns of concerns about staff, meaning children were not adequately safeguarded.

It said there was a lack of communication about staff conduct between the Doncaster LADO function and those of the placing authorities for the children in the schools.

Lack of progress on LADO review under Conservatives

On the back of the inquiry, the then Conservative government promised, in November 2022, to review the LADO role with a view to creating a handbook on the performance of the role.

However, 14 months later, it appeared little progress had been made when the previous government published its response to the panel’s second report from its inquiry.

That said the government would “work with local authorities and Ofsted to review what changes need to be made to the responsibilities of [LADOs] including making sure they have access to the information they need to safeguard children in their area”, with any changes consulted upon later in 2024.

Handbook designed to bring consistency to role

In her update on the Department for Education’s (DfE) response, Phillipson said that the review of the LADO role was now underway.

“We are working with local authorities and Ofsted to review the responsibilities of LADOs,” she said. “We aim to improve both understanding of the LADO role and consistency of their role across different local authorities through the creation of a LADO handbook.

“Consistency is key to ensuring that every LADO in each local authority is working closely together and sharing vital information across boundaries efficiently to improve child protection and safeguarding.”

She indicated that the handbook had been drafted already, with the help of the National LADO Network, which represents officers, Ofsted, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) and the police.

No further commitments on host local authorities’ safeguarding role

In its second report, the panel made a broader recommendation to strengthen the early identification of safeguarding risks in residential settings through an enhanced oversight role for host local authorities and NHS integrated care boards (ICBs).

However, beyond the LADO handbook plan, Phillipson made no further commitments in relation to this recommendation.

Separately, the government has been heavily criticised – including by the panel – for shelving its predecessor’s plan to implement one of the inquiry’s other recommendations, to provide disabled children with non-instructed advocacy from practitioners with specialist training.