Resolution Ready has submitted a response to the Department for Education’s consultation on the proposed Child Protection Authority for England.
Our response focuses on a gap we see consistently in practice: statutory children’s social care complaints are not currently recognised as part of the national learning landscape, and they should be.
Complaints are a formal mechanism through which children, young people and families raise concerns about child protection practice. They regularly surface early indicators of systemic weakness, including poor threshold decisions, drift, weak multi-agency working and failures in escalation. That learning stays local. It rarely reaches national oversight in any structured way.
Our response makes the case for complaints to be treated as a legitimate and complementary source of system intelligence, alongside inspections, reviews and data. Not as a replacement for those mechanisms, but as an additional signal that the CPA should be drawing on.
We also noted the importance of accountability in implementation. Learning from complaints and investigations too often fails to result in meaningful change because ownership is unclear and follow-through is weak. The CPA has an opportunity to address that directly.
We welcome the direction of travel and hope the final design of the CPA reflects the full range of sources through which children and families tell us what is and is not working.
Find out more here: https://consult.education.gov.uk/child-sexual-abuseexploitation-team/child-protection-authority/
