AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank the NSPCC and LSCB and all the members of the FMEA teamespecially Willma King who facilitated the team meetings with sensitivity and intelligence. Also, Wesley Powley-Baker and Di Jerwood who both provided excellent support in the development of this project, and Beth Fylan Gwynn for assistance with the feedback interviews. Source of Funding: National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Conflict of InterestNone 2 2 AbstractFailure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a prospective quality assurance methodology, increasingly used in health care, which identifies potential vulnerabilities in complex, high risk processes and generates remedial actions. We aimed, for the first time, to apply FMEA in a social care context to evaluate the process for recognising and referring children exposed to domestic abuse within one Midlands city safeguarding area in England. A multidisciplinary, multi-agency team of ten front line professionals undertook the FMEA, using a modified methodology, over seven group meetings. The FMEA included mapping out the process under evaluation to identify its component steps, identifying failure modes (potential errors) and possible causes for each step, and generating corrective actions. In this paper we report the output from the FMEA, including illustrative examples of the failure modes and corrective actions generated. We also present an analysis of feedback from the FMEA team and provide future recommendations for the use of FMEA in appraising social care processes and practice. Although challenging, the FMEA was unequivocally valuable for team members and generated a significant number of corrective actions locally for the safeguarding board to consider in its response to children exposed to domestic abuse. KeywordsChild safeguarding; child protection; domestic violence; practitioner research; multidisciplinary work; failure mode and effects analysis 3 3 Bullet PointsWhat is known about this topic Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a prospective quality assurance methodology increasingly used in health care to identify potential vulnerabilities in complex, high risk processes and generate remedial actions. FMEA has not to date been used to evaluate and improve the quality and safety of social care processes. What this paper adds First study to explore the feasibility and utility of using a modified FMEA methodology to evaluate an aspect of a child safeguarding social care process (recognising and referring children exposed to domestic abuse). Reports a summary of the FMEA output, evaluative feedback from the FMEA team, and recommendations for using a prospective systems approach in appraising social care processes and practice.
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