Source: Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel published on this website Thursday 12 February 2026 by Jill Powell

A National child safeguarding review  Feb2026 has called for urgent action to better protect vulnerable unborn babies and infants, following the tragic death of baby Victoria Marten.

Baby Victoria was born in December 2022 and died in early 2023 after her parents, Constance Marten and Mark Gordon, concealed her birth and deliberately evaded statutory services. In 2025 both of baby Victoria’s parents were convicted of gross negligence manslaughter, child cruelty, perverting the course of justice, and concealing the birth of a child.

While the circumstances of baby Victoria’s death are very rare, the review finds that the professional challenges and systemic safeguarding issues involved are much more common. The review highlights multiple risks in baby Victoria’s family circumstances including several concealed pregnancies, repeated child removals, domestic abuse, poor engagement with services, serious offending, and frequent moves between different areas. Many of these issues appear repeatedly in serious safeguarding incidents.

More than 5,000 unborn babies and infants under the age of one were subject to child protection plans last year. Such huge volumes of vulnerable unborn babies and infants, and struggling parents, represent a lot of risk but also a lot of opportunity to intervene positively in family life.

The review concludes that baby Victoria’s death was not predictable but, given the repeating pattern of concealed pregnancies and child removals in the family history, baby Victoria needed professionals to think ahead and consider her safety even before she was conceived. A stronger focus on engaging with her parents and earlier coordinated action across all relevant services might have made a difference.

The review calls for clearer national guidance to ensure vulnerable unborn babies and infants are consistently considered within child protection frameworks, alongside stronger multi‑agency working and improved information‑sharing.

Key findings and recommendations include:

• Earlier and stronger pre‑birth safeguarding, including national guidance that explicitly includes vulnerable unborn babies and infants, and clearer protocols for responding to concealed or late‑disclosed pregnancies
• Trauma‑informed practice, to help reach families who do not engage with services, recognising that avoidance of services often reflects grief and mistrust rather than deliberate refusal
• Better engagement with and support for parents before and after child removal, to help break cycles of harm and reduce repeat risk
• A preventative ‘Think Family’ approach, bringing together adult and children’s services to provide a holistic view and identify issues that affect the whole family unit
• Stronger links between children’s social care and offender management services, especially when serious sex offenders are parents or carers
• Clearer arrangements when families move, including formal information transfer, shared chronologies and defined safeguarding responsibility

The review finds that agencies are often aware of multiple risks within families such as domestic abuse or parental disengagement but do not always assess and manage these risks together. It warns that without stronger coordination, opportunities to protect vulnerable unborn babies and infants can be missed.

The report calls on government to act urgently to strengthen national guidance, improve information‑sharing between agencies, and ensure that professionals have the time, skills and support needed to safeguard unborn babies and infants effectively.

Panel Chair, Sir David Holmes CBE said:

“Few tragedies are greater than the death of a baby, and baby Victoria’s is all the more devastating because her parents caused it.

“Baby Victoria lived in a family where there had been several concealed pregnancies, repeated child removals, domestic abuse, lack of engagement with services, serious offending and frequent moves. These are risks we see time and again in serious safeguarding incidents, and they are examined in depth in our review.

“While baby Victoria’s death was rare, her status as a vulnerable unborn baby and then a vulnerable infant is not. Last year, more than 5,000 unborn babies and infants under one were on child protection plans. Their parents are struggling, often disengaged from services, and many receive little support.

“A key lesson from baby Victoria’s story is clear: to protect vulnerable babies better, we must support their parents too. That may be hard to hear and hard to understand, but it is essential if we are to stop cycles of harm from repeating. Safeguarding professionals need the time, skills and resources to understand why families disengage and to address the underlying issues - whatever they may be  - domestic abuse, substance use, mental health, trauma after previous child removals or anything else.

“That is why we are calling for improved national guidance for safeguarding vulnerable unborn babies and infants, and better support for parents whose children are removed. These changes will help reduce future harm.

“We cannot prevent every act of extreme parental harm - but we can reduce the risks in families and help people to move forward. That must be baby Victoria’s legacy.”

Source: Department for Education published on this website Monday 19 January 2026 by Jill Powell

The CPA is envisaged as an expert, accurate and decisive body that makes the multi-agency child protection system clearer, more unified and ensure there is ongoing improvements through effective evidence-based support.

This consultation seeks views on the CPA’s proposed functions, governance, and interaction with existing bodies. We welcome responses from children and families, frontline practitioners, local authorities, inspectorates, professional bodies, and voluntary, community and statutory organisations involved in safeguarding. Your feedback will help shape the future of child protection in England. 

This consultation will be open to the public for twelve weeks. Alongside this consultation, we will be working with children and young people as well as victims and survivors of abuse to seek their views on our proposals.  

The Department for Education is inviting views through four main sections of this consultation on: 

• The overview, scope and design principles of the CPA 

• Proposals for how the CPA will provide leadership and oversight of the child protection system. 

• Proposals for how the CPA will provide system learning and support.  

• Proposals for how the CPA will drive system improvement in the child protection system.  

• Proposals for how the CPA will be structured and engage with other organisations.  

Share your views

Closes 5 Mar 2026

Contact

ChildProtectionAuthority.CONSULTATION@education.gov.uk

Further Information

Establishing a Child Protection Authority consultation document.pdf

Source: Department of Health and Social Care published on this website ednesday 4 February 2026 by Jill Powell

Children with cancer will have their travel costs paid for, with a new government support package worth up to £10 million a year.

For every parent of a child with cancer, each day presents real challenges, not only in confronting the disease itself, but also in managing the considerable demands and costs associated with transporting their child for specialist treatment.

More than a third of these families must travel over an hour to reach hospital. There are 13 expert centres caring for children with cancer across England, with many young patients and their families face long and frequent journeys, sometimes several times a week, over many months or even years.

The financial burden can be significant, with petrol costs, train fares and lost earnings making an already difficult time, even harder. For some families, it could mean money that means heating their home for fewer hours, or going without fresh, nutritious food at dinner time. These are choices no parent should ever be forced to make.

This commitment sits alongside decisive action to transform cancer care for children and young people; including improving hospital food, ensuring medical psychosocial care during treatment, expanding genomic testing, and detecting cancers earlier when treatment is most effective.

The upcoming national NHS food standards review will ensure young cancer patients have access to high-quality, child-friendly food, including outside mealtimes.

The government will also improve the experience of those children who have to stay in hospital. The NHS and Starlight’s Play Well toolkit will help services deliver high-quality play provision for children, while youth support coordinators will help teenagers and young adults with education, emotional support and fertility concerns.

Furthermore, mental health support will be standardised for all young cancer patients during diagnosis, treatment and long-term follow-up, recognising the experience of cancer often surfaces years after treatment ends.

Taken together, these measures will ensure that when a child faces cancer, their family can focus on what matters most, being by their side and helping them get well.

This follows a series of reforms announced as part of the National Cancer Plan, including measures to improve access to specialists in rural and coastal communities, a crackdown on illegal underage sunbed use, improved bowel cancer screening to catch thousands more cases earlier and a new partnership to support England’s 830,000 working-age cancer patients to remain in employment during and after treatment.

Source: Children’s Commissioner published on this website Wednesday 14 January 2026 by Jill Powell

• Second report into illegal children’s homes by Children’s Commissioner shows one year on, vulnerable children are still being housed in caravans, holiday camps or AirBnBs – some for as long as three years 

• Number of illegal placements costing £1 million per child rises, despite these settings being unable to provide safety or care – at an estimated total cost of £353 million to the taxpayer 

• Most children placed in illegal homes have mental health or additional educational needs – more than half have Education, Health and Care Plans 

• “This is what failure looks like”: Children’s Commissioner calls for specialist foster care, more children’s homes and a new focus for reforming children’s social care 

More than half of children housed illegally by councils have Education, Health and Care Plans, new data from the Children’s Commissioner confirms – as the number of illegal placements costing more than £1 million per child has risen since last year. 

One year on from the Commissioner’s first report into local authorities’ use of illegal homes – including AirBnBs, holiday camps and caravans – to accommodate children in care, data shows very little has changed: on 1^st September this year, there were 669 children living in illegal homes, down from 764 on the same day last year.  

Nearly 60% of these children have complex additional needs or disabilities requiring an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), meaning they likely also receive support from other services beyond social care, while more than one third (36%) are receiving support from child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). 

Of the 669 children placed illegally, 89 have been living in the same illegal placement for more than one year. While most are over 15, there are some children of pre-school age growing up in illegal children’s homes.  

The average duration of these illegal placements is a little over six months. One child was at put in a holiday camp for nearly nine months, another was in a caravan for more than four months and a handful of children remained in an illegal home for more than three years. 

The average weekly cost of a placement was more than £10,000 – the equivalent to more than half a million pounds over the course of a year. In total councils across England have spent an estimated £353 million on illegal children’s homes in 2025, of which 36 placements had already cost £1 million each by 1^st September.  

Today’s data underscores the crisis in children’s social care, with children – many extremely vulnerable or with complex needs – placed in poor quality placements at an exorbitant cost to taxpayers.