Issue - meetings

Helen Blackman, Director of Integrated Children’s Services introduced the report on the Update on Priority 2 – Safeguarding and Supporting Children and Families. Clive Chambers, Head of Safeguarding and Aileen Wilson, Head of Early Help Services gave presentations to the board on work around Child Sexual Exploitation and Parenting programme work. The following information was highlighted:

(a)  Since the last update Police staff have joined the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). Adult Safeguarding have committed to joining the MASH and the National Probation Service will have a presence within the team from the beginning of October;

(b)  Over the last 2 years training has been rolled out across the Schools as part of the Designated Safeguarding Lead role and has delivered training to nearly 700 staff with at least 100 schools represented;

(c)  In recent years there has been some intense media interest in Chid Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and how local authorities are tackling the issue. Nottingham has been considered to be in the vanguard for many years;

(d)  During return interviews of young people who went missing it became clear that they tended to gravitate towards city centre establishments and bars and the need to engage this sector in CSE training was clear;

(e)  This engagement with the security industry has been very well received, training events have taken place over the last 2 years or so and in August 2017 a leaflet was jointly launched with the Security Industry Association targeting the sector and aiming to help support them in identifying and reporting CSE;

(f)  The Multi Agency Sexual Exploitation (MASE) panel is a well-established panel that looks at three aspects of CSE, the child or young person, the perpetrators and the places CSE is most likely to occur. It does not replace other activities that work to keep children safe but sense checks the work being done, and has helped to establish some very effective work practices;

(g)  Work around perpetrators is the most difficult aspect of the work undertaken by the panel. Police powers are limited around prosecution and a recent piece of work looked at other ways to disrupt CSE. These additional approaches work alongside Community Protection work that ensure that perpetrators are not involved in licensable activities;

(h)  The Panel has developed a set of 24 standards that aim to ensure a consistent response and approach across the county and partnership agencies RAG rated their performance against the standards, there were no red results and only 2 amber results;

(i)  Parenting support has always been available within the city but the offer has not been consistent across different areas. The Early Help Team has worked to bring together the provision and pool resources from across the city;

(j)  The purpose of the pilot was to increase the range of interventions, test the efficacy of the group work model and to reduce the level of casework within the early help and targeted family support teams;

(k)  Within the last year the completion rate for the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 20