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Daniel Pelka review retrospective: deeper analysis and progress report on implemetation of recommendations

Following publication of the serious case review into the death of Daniel Pelka, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families wrote to the Chair of Coventry Safeguarding Children Board on 16th September 2013 requesting a deeper analysis of the reasons why practice failures had occurred.

This deeper analysis was asked to look specifically (but not exclusively) into:

A project to support more effective involvement of service users in adult support and protection activity

Report of a short-term scoping project to explore how social work service practitioners might be better equipped to understand the perspectives of people who may be at risk of harm and to identify ways to improve service user participation in investigations, decision-making and meetings.

Modelling the relationship between needs and costs: how accurate resource allocation can deliver personal budgets and personalisation

Resource allocation systems based upon measures of need are one widely adopted approach to estimating the cost of the individual service user's care package in a manner directly proportionate to individual need.

However, some recent studies have questioned the feasibility and utility of such systems, arguing that the relationship between needs and costs cannot be modelled with sufficient accuracy to provide a useful guide to individual allocation. In contrast, this paper presents three studies demonstrating that this is possible.