6711 A national audit of the ‘good practice service delivery standards for the management of children referred for child protection medical assessments’

Objectives The Child Protection Service Delivery Standards Audit is an audit of the 'Good practice service delivery standards for the management of children referred for child protection medical assessments'1 – a national publication aiming to standardise and improve the care for children attending child protection medical assessments. The audit aimed to encourage best practice in service delivery in line with the standards, by providing a mechanism for services to self-evaluate against the standards, and by providing the data needed to support quality improvement activity in this area of safeguarding. It sought to understand the foundations and infrastructure in place for service delivery when a child is referred for a child protection medical assessment for suspected abuse or neglect. The audit also aimed to explore the 'models of service delivery' that exist, by asking services to respond to contextual questions on aspects of other service arrangements that are likely to differ across the UK, such as a service's rota capacity. Models of service delivery questions were not designed to understand alignment with the standards, but instead to help build a clearer picture of how services are delivered in the UK. Methods The audit was open to all UK services providing child protection medical assessments for suspected abuse or neglect, within working hours (Monday to Friday, 9:00 – 17:00). Participation was voluntary. Participating services were asked to respond to 132 dataset questions (103 relating to the standards, and 29 relating to models of service delivery) via the RCPCH Data Portal data collection platform. The data collection period ran from Friday 31 March 2023 to Friday 14 July 2023 inclusive. A total of 132 UK services registered to participate. Of these, 118 provided a full audit submission, six provided a partial submission, and eight did not make a submission within the above defined data collection period. Results The standards cover 13 areas of service delivery. The audit asked a number of questions against each standard to help understand the extent to which they were being met. The table 1 below shows the extent to which the standards were met by responding services in the UK. Calculations made are expressed in terms of percentage met, where a figure of 100% would mean that all questions within a standard were met by all responding services. Conclusion The audit identified areas of high national alignment to the standards, while also highlighting significant areas for further focus and quality improvement activity. Reference Good practice service delivery standards for the management of children referred for child protection medical assessments, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and Child Protection Special Interest Group, October 2020.