After six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was killed by his parents in June 2020, a national review found a series of flaws in the public systems that should have protected him - one of which related to Operation Encompass.

Operation Encompass, the report notes, was then a voluntary safeguarding partnership in which “the police notify schools after a recorded domestic abuse incident where a child on the school’s roll was present”.

However, because of the pandemic, a senior police officer had chosen to suspend notifications in their area, meaning Labinjo-Hughes’ school was unaware of a serious incident that occurred on 15 April 2020 and so did not offer him a place in school during lockdown.

“The school has reflected that, if it had been notified about the incident, it would have offered a place to Arthur because of his increased vulnerability,” the report notes.

The national outcry following the public release of details of Labinjo-Hughes’ death meant that those who had set up Operation Encompass knew more had to be done: “We had to push for legislation,” Elisabeth Carney-Haworth, a retired headteacher who founded the partnership with her retired police-sergeant husband David in 2010, tells Tes. 

“I can’t say that [a notification] definitely would have saved Arthur’s life, but the school wasn’t given that opportunity.” 

Consequently, after 15 years of being in place on a voluntary basis across all 43 forces in England and Wales, in April 2024 an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill to include Operation Encompass on a statutory footing was made in the House of Lords with cross-party support. 

The value for schools

The new act passed into law on 24 May that year, imposing a statutory obligation on police forces to share Operation Encompass notifications with schools. 

For many involved in safeguarding, this has been a welcome move: “There is no doubt in my mind that Operation Encompass makes children safer,” says Rosie Hart, head of safeguarding at 26-school Astrea Academy Trust.

“We need to know what has happened to a child because if they are coming in dysregulated or incredibly upset or traumatised, we need to be able to implement support from the get-go.”

Hart says that Operation Encompass is also useful for supporting children who miss school after a domestic abuse incident. “If they’re absent, [a notification means] we know it’s high risk for them. So we would make a referral to social care in the morning, whereas otherwise I may have waited until the end of the day to find out more about why the child wasn’t in school.”

Chloe Watts, child protection officer at Wales High School in South Yorkshire, agrees, saying that Operation Encompass “can explain any unusual challenging behaviour and emotions. It allows us to subtly check in, and give [students] a safe space to talk if they want it”.

It’s something from which many schools benefit, with Carney-Haworth noting that approximately 2,000 notifications are sent out across England and Wales each day. “And they usually contain more than one sibling, so that’s at least 4,000 children.”

An unclear data picture

To try to find out more about exactly how often police have shared notifications in the year since the law came into force, Tes made a freedom of information (FOI) request to the 43 police forces in England and Wales for the number of notifications each has sent out since May 2024.

However, of the 39 forces that responded, just 12 provided Tes with the number. 

The forces that reported sending the highest numbers of notifications were Lancashire Police, which reported 22,457 in the year from May 2024; Derbyshire Constabulary, with 21,625; and Devon and Cornwall Police, with approximately 13,485.

Many of the other forces told Tes the data was not stored in a way that allowed for easy retrieval, while others said they did not hold the information at all, and encouraged us to contact county councils.

Some of these county councils in turn advised Tes to contact police forces, while others even recommended contacting individual schools. 

These regional discrepancies exist because in some areas, notifications are sent directly by police, while elsewhere, police alert local authorities to contact schools. Clearly, this is yet another example of the messiness of the national safeguarding picture, as Tes previously investigated.

Notification concerns

Furthermore, included in the data that Tes did receive were some alarming figures. In January 2025, for example, Suffolk Constabulary received 531 notifications of domestic abuse, yet only 231 were sent on to schools - meaning that 300 were not.

The picture was equally striking in February, with 298 of 524 notifications not sent to schools, and in March, with 229 of 411 notifications not sent. The pattern was similar throughout last year.

Tes contacted Suffolk Constabulary to ask for an explanation for these unsent notifications. The force could not provide one, instead recommending that we speak to Suffolk County Council, which did not provide a response in time for publication.

‘It allows us to subtly check in, and give students a safe space to talk’

Another issue is that, despite the recommendation being for police to notify schools before the start of the next school day, most police forces and county councils could not provide any confirmation of how long it takes for each notification to be sent. 

However, Shropshire County Council did tell us that there are “on average six days between the incident and the notification being sent to the schools”.

“Though,” the council adds, “it’s fair to say that generally the council notifies the school upon receipt of the notification from the police, so the delay could reasonably be between the incident happening and it being reported to the police.”

A lack of information

Schools’ experiences echo these concerning timelines.

Steve Bane, lead safeguarding officer at 35-school Cabot Learning Federation, says: “Recently, we went through a phase where we were getting some notices a month or two months after the incident.”

Watts at Wales High says it can take between a day and four days to receive notifications. “It depends if it has happened over a weekend, as we only receive them Monday to Friday.”

As well as timing issues, others note concerns with the information that is shared. Guidance says that any Operation Encompass notification should include the child’s name, date of birth and usual address, as well as the date, time and location of the incident; the child’s relationship with the adults involved; and whether the child was present at the incident.

However, Hart says that a notification does not “always share as much information as we’d like it to. I have some DSLs [designated safeguarding leads] who will say to me, ‘We know something has happened, so we can be on high alert, but if we had more context, we’d be able to do more’”.

Reports should also include “the voice of the child”, which Carney-Haworth says will help schools “understand…a child’s living experience [in order] to be able to support them appropriately”. 

Yet Hart says: “I haven’t had any personal experience of seeing the child’s voice on Operation Encompass alerts.” 

Children’s commissioner Rachel de Souza tells Tes that this is a concern she shares: “Many local areas face practical and financial challenges to successfully embedding this way of working, with schools receiving notifications late or [lacking] enough information to safeguard children at risk,” she says.

“It is essential that teachers and school staff are informed about which children may need additional support, and how they can best provide that support.”

Police are developing their approach

Carney-Haworth acknowledges the issue. “We know there are at least two forces that are yet to fully include the context,” she adds, noting that both cases are attributed to the limitations of the computer systems used by the forces.

However, some forces are working hard to get this right, with Carney-Haworth pointing to Merseyside Police as having developed an “exemplary” approach. This has taken time to get right, as the force’s Pippa Wilcox explains. 

‘The timeliness and quality of the notifications are paramount’

While notifications were initially sent over the phone before the start of the school day, “it wouldn’t be every day, because there just wasn’t the capacity”, she tells Tes. This meant that some notifications were missed.

To address this concern, in 2018 the force introduced an automated process whereby Operation Encompass is triggered when a child is added to a domestic-abuse case form. An officer adds the school name and, once the form is completed, the computer system retrieves the relevant DSL email address from a database and sends an email to the school within 15 minutes.

Safety valves

Human errors do, however, still exist within the current process, Wilcox admits. 

For example, there are numerous schools named “St Mary’s” in the area, so sometimes officers choose the wrong one from the drop-down. In other instances, parents simply “refuse to tell officers which school their child attends”.

The force has now introduced safety valves to resolve these issues, such as a direct line to the relevant local authority teams, which can find correct school details, and a generic inbox that collects failed notifications and is monitored seven days a week.

Meanwhile, at Greater Manchester Police, Steph Parker, assistant chief constable, admits that they, too, have faced challenges in enacting Operation Encompass, most notably “when an officer may forget to send a referral, and [will] then go off on their rest days”. This means that a notification will be delayed, if not forgotten.

But she hopes a new computer system, due to arrive in the next 18 months, will change that, as it “won’t let officers move on or close anything down until they’ve completed that referral”.

She says that, in the meantime, the key is good training for police staff “around the importance of Operation Encompass and, if we get this right, the impact on the child. That’s what we are really trying to get into the hearts and minds of our frontline”. 

Tes contacted the National Police Chiefs’ Council to ask about nationwide initiatives to improve Operation Encompass practice, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

A ‘transformative initiative’

Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, says this focus on better data sharing is vital.

“[Operation Encompass is] hugely valuable to schools, particularly now it is on a statutory footing - [but] the timeliness and quality of the notifications are paramount.”

‘The impact on the child is what we are really trying to get into the hearts and minds of our frontline’

Meanwhile, Anne Longfield, executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, says that, given the sad reality of how many pupils live with the impact of domestic abuse, Operation Encompass can be a “transformative initiative” - but only if schools are adequately resourced. 

“Schools must also be equipped with the tools they need to respond appropriately to these referrals and to provide the support that families - and children in particular - need,” she says.

Tes contacted the Department for Education to ask about plans to better equip schools to support vulnerable children identified by Operation Encompass, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Police must reach ‘the gold standard’

Despite Operation Encompass becoming law, there is some way to go before the system operates as smoothly as possible. However, there is clearly a will for this to happen, both among education professionals and the police.

For instance, Bane notes that when concerns around slow notifications were raised, the police in the trust’s area acted. “We all sat down and said, ‘We need to make sure that this information is coming through on time.’ That has definitely improved.”

Carney-Haworth hopes this kind of interaction between police and schools becomes more common, and will continue to work with forces to help them reach “the gold standard”, given how important it is to children around the country. “Operation Encompass saves lives,” she says.