Safeguarding Children and Young People

1
Safeguarding Children and Young People

• Jeanette Pugh
• Director, Safeguarding Group
• 13th December 2007

2
Overview

• Our ambition
• Public Service Agreement
• Staying Safe strategy
• Ensuring a safe workforce
• Strengthening the guidance framework
• Supporting LSCBs
• Child death reviews

3
Ambition for safeguarding

• Everyone taking responsibility
• A focus on prevention and early intervention
• Clear accountability, decision making, planning
• Effective local services co-ordinated by LSCBs
• Public understanding and action
• Measurable improvement in outcomes
• Staying safe as well as child protection
  tackling interconnections

4
Public Service Agreement Improve Children and
Young Peoples Safety

• Public Service Agreement Improve children and
  young peoples safety mechanism for focusing
  Government work and driving progress
• Part of suite of PSAs announced in October 2007
• Indicators
• Percentage of children who have experienced
  bullying
• Percentage of children referred to childrens
  social care who received an initial assessment
  within 7 working days
• Hospital admissions caused by unintentional and
  deliberate injuries to children and young people
• Preventable child deaths as recorded through
  child death review processes
• Delivery Agreement sets out plans for driving
  progress.

5
Staying Safe a consultation on children and
young peoples safety
6
Staying Safe strategy

• Published 18 July consultation to 31 October
• Objectives of the strategy
• Raise awareness of importance of safeguarding and
  encourage wider debate around safeguarding as
  everyones responsibility
• Promote better understanding of safeguarding
  issues, and start to change behaviour towards
  children and young people
• Ensure work in this area is coherent and
  effectively co-ordinated across Government to
  maximise the impact on outcomes
• Reinforce existing activity by proposing new
  actions in each area of safeguarding framework
  (universal, targeted and responsive) to plug gaps
  or improve linkages
• Fed into the Childrens Plan
• Cross-Government Staying Safe action plan early
  2008

7
Staying Safe consultation responses

• General positive response to the consultation.
  Over 1,000 written responses as well as regional
  events and focus group discussions
• Majority felt that
• Children are currently safe
• Keeping children safe is everyones
  responsibility
• Its important to balance protecting children
  with allowing them the freedom to learn about
  managing risks

8
Staying Safe consultation responses

• Multi-agency working is important
• Importance of universal / preventative services,
  in particular Health Visitors
• Online concerns internet use, social network
  sites and cyber-bullying
• Children and young people in particular are
  concerned about safety on the streets

9
Strengthening the guidance framework

• To help agencies apply Working Together
  effectively to the needs of children in
  particular circumstances.
• Core processes and requirements still apply.
• Safeguarding children from abuse linked to a
  belief in spirit possession published May 2007
• Safeguarding children who may have been
  traffifcked consulted on July-August 2007,
  published 7th December 2007
• Sexual exploitation - forthcoming

10
Child Abuse Linked to Accusations of Possession
and Witchcraft

• Concerns around service response to this
  situation research commissioned
• Eleanor Stobarts report, Child Abuse Linked to
  Accusations of Possession and Witchcraft found
  relevant cases, looked at scale and nature of the
  abuse.
• The Government accepted all the recommendations,
  one of which was to publish good practice
  guidance for professionals

11
Guidance safeguarding children from abuse
linked to a belief in spirit possession
(published May 2007)

• Places this in context of core processes
• Definitions, information about incidence, and
  other background. How such abuse can arise.
• Things to consider in identifying and dealing
  with this abuse including
• Involving key services
• If there is a concern about a child being taken
  out of the UK
• Taking advice.
• Points of good practice from agencies and
  institutions including
• Understanding the wider context
• Early identification
• Developing partnership with communities
• Working with places of worship and faith
  organisations

12
Guidance Safeguarding children who may have
been trafficked

• To help services safeguard trafficked children.
• Summarises what is known about the problem
• Issues for practice include
• Aligning Border and Immigration Agency and other
  services
• Circumstances of trafficked children reluctant
  to approach or confide in services? Coached in
  how to engage with services then disappear?
• Consultation during Summer draft largely
  welcomed, suggestions for improvements
• Final version published 7 December

13
Guidance sexual exploitation

• Announced in Governments prostitution strategy
  updating and revising 2000 guidance on
  Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution.
• Currently being drawn up with help from
  stakeholders.
• To retain key messages from earlier guidance.
• New version to reflect
• Broader understanding of the problem - a
  continuum of sorts of sexual exploitation
  including organised sexual exploitation, short of
  prostitution as such
• Legislative changes and new Government strategy
  on prostitution
• Working Together guidance including on sharing
  information around under-age sex.
• Lessons from practice e.g. often needs time to
  work with victims, build trust

14
A safe workforce

• System for preventing unsuitable people from
  working with children progressively strengthened
• Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 provides
  for the establishment of the most robust scheme
  yet for vetting and barring individuals
• Independent Safeguarding Authority to be
  established 2008
• Planning assumption for go-live of the new scheme
  autumn 2008
• Critical all employers, organisations, parents
  and individuals understand the new schemes
  requirements

15
Allegations review

• Consultation on effectiveness of allegations
  guidance implementation held over the summer
• Findings being analysed
• Key issues around timeliness of resolution and
  awareness and understanding of the guidance and
  procedures across the childrens workforce
• Report to be published early 2008

16
Planned work to support LSCBs

• Practice guidance to be developed
• Emphasise importance of participation
• Define framework for progress
• Provide support for better LSCB practice
• Clarify the place of LSCBs in the performance
  cycle
• Undertake a further stocktake end 2008
• Trial national template for local protocols
• Clarify how LSCBs and SHAs can most effectively
  engage one another

17
LSCBs functions relating to child deaths

• Collecting and analysing information about the
  deaths of all children in their area
• Putting in place procedures for ensuring a
  co-ordinated response to the unexpected death of
  a child

18
What is an unexpected death?

• death of a child which was not anticipated as a
  significant possibility 24 hours before the death
  or where there was a similarly unexpected
  collapse leading to or precipitating the events
  which lead to the death
• (para 7.6 in Working Together)

19
Rapid response to unexpected deaths

• Multi-agency team
• responds to all unexpected deaths
• carries out immediate investigations of these
  deaths
• undertakes the types of investigations that
  relate to the current responsibilities of
  statutory agencies e.g. police,
  paediatric/forensic services, social care
  services
• has an on call capacity
• collects information in a standard manner
• follows the death through and maintains contact
  at regular intervals with family members to
  inform them of the current situation.

20
Overview of all child deaths

• Paper exercise based on information available
  from the rapid response team and other sources
  including, perhaps the coroner
• Fixed team membership to review these cases
• Team holds regular meetings.
• Population covered needs to be gt500,000
• Team may cover more than one LSCB some have
  already formed groups of local areas
• Age range to be covered birth to under 18
  (consistent with Children Act 1989).

21
Study of trial LSCBs Warwick University

• Multi-disciplinary research team
• Evaluation of early starters to learn from
  their experiences
• 9 pilot sites chosen
• Due to report by the end of the year

22
Support work

• Supporting materials
• Familiarisation DVD produced
• Multi-agency training resources commissioned and
  underway due for completion March 2008
• Funding to cover Local Authority costs via Area
  Based Grant 7.2m in 2008-09, 7.4m in 2009-10
  and 7.7m in 2010-11.
• DH looking at costs to health service

23
Web references

• PSA delivery agreement 13 www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
  /media/0/8/pbr_csr07_psa13.pdf
• Working Together to Safeguard Children
  www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/workingtogether
• Information on LSCBs www.everychildmatters.gov.uk
  /lscb
• New guidance on safeguarding children who may
  have been trafficked www.everychildmatters.gov.uk
  /safeguarding

24
Safeguarding Children and Young People

• Jeanette Pugh
• Director, Safeguarding Group
• 13th December 2007