Record Keeping

Well kept records provide an essential underpinning to good Safeguarding Children practice. An individual agency's or practitioner's records should be clear, accurate and contemporaneous, ensuring that there is a documented account of contact with a child or family, and a record of face to face discussions and telephone conversations with other practitioners, decisions made during such discussion, and responsibility for carrying out decisions made. This is an essential source of evidence for investigations and inquiries, and may also be disclosed in court proceedings.

Accurate recording is also essential to ensuring the accountability of agencies to those children and families with whom the agency is involved.

Safeguarding Children requires information to be brought together from a number of sources and careful professional judgements to be made on the basis of this information. A multi-agency chronology of significant incidents is an important tool which social workers can use as part of their case recording at any stage of involvement with a family.