In April 1997 the Social Services Inspectorate undertook an inspection of the child protection services in Cambridgeshire's Social Services Department. This inspection took place at the request of the Parliamentary Under Secretary in the Department of Health following the non-accidental death of Rikki Neave, a child on Cambridgeshire's child protection register. The 1997 inspection identified serious deficiencies in the standard of child protection services in Cambridgeshire.
The Department of Health asked the authority to prepare and implement an action plan to address the forty recommendations of the report. A further inspection took place in November 1998 to evaluate the extent to which these recommendations had been fully implemented and whether Cambridgeshire now had an effective child protection service in place. This report, also known as the Rikki Neave report, covers the findings of the 1998 inspection.