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 People’s Safety” • Public Service Agreement “Improve children and young people’s 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 children’s 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 people’s 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 everyone’s 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 Children’s 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 everyone’s responsibility • It’s 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 Stobart’s 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 Government’s 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 scheme’s 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 children’s 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 >500,000; • 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