The Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership has published a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review (LCSPR) into the tragic death of 15-year-old Daejaun Campbell.
This review was commissioned and overseen by the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership (GSCP) and undertaken by an independent author who brought together partners including the police, health, social care and education to review the practice of all agencies involved and identify any learning.
The review has focused on four key lines of enquiry:
- Information sharing between multi-agency professionals
- The partnership response to extra-familial harm
- The role of men in Daejaun’s life, including the impact of the loss of his father.
- Daejaun’s voice, and how it was represented in assessments, case management and record-keeping.
The review makes nine recommendations to strengthen how agencies in Greenwich work together to protect children and young people at risk of exploitation, serious violence and harm, and work is already underway against these recommendations.
Safeguarding Review Recommendations
1
Royal Borough of Greenwich
Greenwich Children and Family Social Care should provide assurance to the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership that integrated multi-agency arrangements under the Families First reforms ensure timely information-sharing, coordinated safeguarding planning, reduced turnover of the allocated family help worker and effective risk management for children experiencing extra-familial harm. These arrangements should strengthen continuity of professional oversight and ensure protective family relationships, including positive male figures, are considered in safeguarding plans.
What we have done:
A new service is being introduced in Greenwich as part of the Families First reforms to deliver intensive adolescent wellbeing and safeguarding support. Multidisciplinary teams will work closely with partners including police, health, education, the voluntary sector, and Community Safety. Under this model, there is no handover/step up or down after assessment: the practitioner who completes the assessment remains the Lead for Adolescent Help, Wellbeing and Support (or Family Help). This ensures continuity, reduces duplication, and avoids families having to repeat their story or build new relationships with different professionals.
2
Royal Borough of Greenwich
Children and Families Social Care, Safer Communities, the Metropolitan Police Service, schools, the FaASS and health partners should jointly review the Serious Violence Strategy (Objectives 1–4) in order to strengthen multi-agency practice for children at risk of exploitation — establishing explicit joint intelligence-sharing protocols and named lead accountabilities at both operational and strategic levels — and provide assurance to the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership that these arrangements are in place.
What we have done:
Work is underway to review an Adolescent Safeguarding Strategy. This is separate to the Serious Violence Duty referenced above which Community Safety have a Statutory Requirement to provide. The emphasis is on our safeguarding partners completing a strategic action plan which provides clarity and outlines the ways in which our system will respond to different forms of adolescent risk. A draft version will be delivered within the next 3 months.
3
Royal Borough of Greenwich
Children and Families’ Social Care, Health and Education should ensure that children presenting with substance misuse linked to exploitation risk receive early intervention and timely referral to specialist young people’s substance misuse services. Systems should support consistent health-promotion information and coordinated safeguarding responses where substance use forms part of a wider exploitation profile.
What we have done:
The Young People's Substance Misuse Team (YPSMT) provides this for all children meeting their criteria. This offer is located within the RBG Youth Justice Service but delivers to children across the borough with no requirement for them to be known to YJS. The Service will work closely with the newly established Adolescent Help Teams to ensure that young people get the support they need.
4
Metropolitan Police
The Metropolitan Police Service should provide the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership with assurance that all incidents involving children reported as missing are appropriately recorded and assessed for safeguarding risk by ensuring that, through the implementation of the new Local Missing Hubs where a child is reported missing but their whereabouts are known and no formal missing person report is created, or where the child returns before such a report is generated, all relevant information, intelligence, and identified safeguarding risks obtained at the first point of contact are consistently recorded on Metropolitan Police Service systems, with compliance evidenced through regular auditing and reporting to the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership.
5
All
The Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership and relevant Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships should review cross-borough housing pathways to ensure families experiencing extra-familial harm can access relocation support where safeguarding risks are present. Clear procedures should enable professionals to escalate safeguarding concerns linked to housing and community risk.
What we have done:
A joint protocol was developed in 2025 between Children’s Services, Housing Services and Community Services to provide clarity and guidance to support families fleeing violence. This accounts for multiple types of violence including extra-familial harm.
6
The Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership should strengthen multi-agency systems for analysing peer networks and contextual risk, including the use of peer mapping and intelligence-sharing forums. This should support earlier identification of exploitation networks and coordinated disruption activity. In doing so, the GSCP should draw on the Youth Endowment Fund's guidance on integrated pathways, which calls for "one pathway, one plan and one owner for children affected by extra-familial harm," and recommends consolidating multiple risk management panels into a single, coordinated decision-making forum — ensuring that group-level risk is assessed and acted upon collectively, rather than managed in silos across separate processes.
What we have done:
Work progressing alongside new government guidance and consultation on information sharing
7
ICB
The Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership should support training for GP and primary care staff on identifying and responding to indicators of criminal or sexual exploitation in adolescents. Training should include safe enquiry, safeguarding referral pathways, and information-sharing responsibilities.
8
All
All agencies should ensure safeguarding assessments explicitly analyse how a child’s race, ethnicity, identity and experiences of discrimination influence vulnerability and engagement. Practitioners should integrate these factors into risk assessments and safeguarding planning.
What we have done:
The Greenwich Practice Framework has a strong emphasis on understanding the child and family's Social GRACES including their race, ethnicity, identity and experiences of discrimination and the impact of this on their lived experience. There is an expectation that Systemic genograms are completed with every family and includes their race, language and identity. We have created an Anti-Racist practice strategy which will be shared with the whole service and contains key principles of how we will work with children and families in an anti-racist and anti-discriminatory way.
9
Children’s Services, Education, Health, and Police should ensure that adolescents’ voices are interpreted through trauma-informed and exploitation-aware practice. Silence, minimisation, and behavioural cues should be understood as potential indicators of coercion or harm.
The Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review is available on the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership website.
Anthony Okereke, Leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, said:
“Daejaun’s death was appalling and tragic and we send our deepest condolences to his mother Jodian and his family and friends. Daejaun was still a child. His mother described him as having the ‘biggest smile’, a funny and caring boy who was nurturing to his siblings. He was charismatic, articulate, polite and humorous, and well-liked by his teachers and school friends. He had his whole life ahead of him with aspirations to be an engineer. That was cruelly taken from him by adults that intentionally manipulate vulnerable children, pulling them into the orbit of gang culture while cowardly - pulling the strings and hiding in the shadows. Those criminals then use those children to recruit more children. Although Daejaun’s family have been brought some justice following the criminal trial and prison time for those found guilty of his murder, it will never be enough until as a society we eradicate the drug and gang culture, and the high-level organised crime networks behind it, which cruelly pit our young people against each other.
“The independent safeguarding review took place to look at the practice of all the agencies involved in Daejaun’s life since 2023. We welcome the report’s recommendations that relate to us as a local authority and take the findings extremely seriously. We have already taken robust action with our partners to address the recommendations and begun implementing them all. This includes stronger joint working between children’s services, schools, community safety teams, health partners and the police, with improved information sharing, clearer accountability and coordinated safeguarding responses. More frontline professionals and carers have also received additional training to help identify exploitation earlier.
“We are also introducing strengthened responses to serious youth violence, exploitation and missing children through dedicated multi-agency safeguarding arrangements focused on risks outside a child's home or school. Alongside this, work is underway to simplify support for families so young people can build trusted relationships with professionals without repeatedly having to retell their experiences.
“Our support for young people is one of the widest in London and we provide a number of safe places to go such as youth hubs, play centres, children's centres, family hubs, and our public Safehaven Superhubs where anyone can go if they feel threatened or in danger. We also fund Wellbeing in Schools Hubs to work with children and their families to make sure they stay safe and attend school. We run outreach sessions in schools and have installed four weapon surrender bins across the borough, which has successfully removed over 800 knives from our streets so far. If anyone has concerns about youth violence they can contact the council, police or our partner organisations. Find help and support at Get help if you are worried about knife crime | Get help and support | Royal Borough of Greenwich. In an emergency, always call 999.”
Debbie Warren, Chief Executive of Royal Greenwich, said:
“This has been an incredibly difficult time for Daejaun’s mother, family and friends. They have shown great courage and strength in taking part in the Safeguarding Partnership’s independent Child Safeguarding Practice Review. The review will help us understand not only what happened, but why things happened as they did to help improve our response, and the way we work with families, in the future.
“The role of the review is not to investigate or apportion blame but to understand the circumstances leading to Daejaun’s death from a multi-agency safeguarding perspective, recognising both strengths in practice and opportunities for improvement in how agencies work together to protect other vulnerable children. The independent and detailed review makes a number of recommendations for ourselves and local partners and it is now essential that every single person in every organisation involved in child safeguarding reads this report and understands the lessons learnt.
“Our Children’s Service in Greenwich is judged Outstanding by Ofsted and we will continue to keep making improvements to keep children safe in our borough. We are absolutely determined to do everything we can to help protect children.”
Actions already taken by the Royal Borough of Greenwich
The council has begun to implement the recommendations relating to the organisation in full. We have already reiterated our joint working between children’s services, schools, community safety teams, health partners and the police, with improved information sharing, clearer accountability and coordinated safeguarding responses. More frontline professionals and carers have also received additional training to help identify exploitation earlier.
We are also introducing enhanced responses to serious youth violence, exploitation and missing children through dedicated multi-agency safeguarding arrangements focused on risks outside a child's home or school. Alongside this, work is underway to simplify support for families so young people can build trusted relationships with professionals without repeatedly having to retell their experiences. Practice is continuously reviewed and this report will help all partners improve further.
We have recently launched our Integrated Enforcement Plan which outlines how we are actively working with the police to increase safety measures across the borough.
What happens next?
Progress against the review’s recommendations will continue to be closely monitored through a multi-agency action plan, with regular oversight from safeguarding partners and ongoing public reporting through the Greenwich Safeguarding Children Partnership annual report.