ALTHOUGH today's safeguarding review found that the deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes were tragic, it says the experiences of the children were sadly "not unusual."

As well as shining a light on the failings in Bradford and Solihull that led to the deaths of these children, the National Child Safeguarding Panel report makes clear that there are problems that need to be tackled nationally to prevent similar issues happening again.

READ MORE: How little Star was failed time after time by those paid to protect her

The report says: "While undertaking this review it has been abundantly clear to the Panel that the experiences of Arthur and Star are, tragically, not unusual when considered against other serious safeguarding incidents.

"Every year we see a significant number of serious safeguarding incidents, which are incidents where a child whom the local authority knows, or suspects, has been abused or neglected is seriously harmed or killed.

"There are a set of chronic challenges getting in the way of good child protection practice in England. These issues are not new but they are complex and complicated to overcome. To do so effectively, requires that we consider death and serious harm from abuse and neglect within their system context rather than seeing them as isolated events.

"It is clear that issues affecting practice in Arthur and Star’s cases are not local but national.

"These are problems which successive reviews and inquiries have pointed to and sought to address.

"And yet they keep recurring.

"We are advocating therefore that our approach to child protection practice should be strengthened at both a local and at a national level.

"We are proposing that child protection practice needs to be a genuinely multi-professional, multi-agency endeavour, end to end.

National recommendations made in the review are:

• Implementing new expert-led, multi-agency child protection units to undertake investigation, planning and oversight of children at risk.

• Establishing national multi-agency practice standards for child protection. This would provide a standard of quality and consistency in practice for working with children at risk and their families across the country.

• A sharper performance focus and better co-ordination of child protection policy in central Government. This involves the establishment of a national Child Protection Board, bringing together all relevant central Government departments, local government, the police, education and health representatives.