Issue - meetings

Report of the Head of Legal and Governance

Chris Cook, Independent Chair of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Board (NCSCB), John Matravers, Service Manager for Safeguarding Partnerships (NCC), and Alison Michalska, Corporate Director for Children and Adults, were in attendance to present the Nottingham City Safeguarding Board Annual Report for 2017/18.

To support the thorough Annual report and also with reference to the next agenda item on Proposals for replacing Safeguarding Children Board arrangements, a detailed PowerPoint was delivered which is included in the initial publication of the minutes.

Chris Cook briefly outlined the purpose of the NCSCB and highlighted the following points:

(a)  as a reflection of the expanding risks to children, the NCSCB headline statement now also refers to online activity: ‘We want all the children and young people of Nottingham City to be safe from harm, inside their home, outside their home and online’;

(b)  the aim of the Board is to involve all agencies in working together in partnership to safeguard and promote the wellbeing of children by providing scrutiny to ensure the effectiveness of policies and practices across the partnership;

(c)  the second annual NCSCB ‘Every Colleague Matters’ event on ‘Empowering the Workforce to deliver Excellence in Safeguarding Practice’ was attended by more than  350 practitioners from across the safeguarding partnership;

(d)  one of the issues raised was changing the culture and mindset with regard to missing appointments in that this should be considered as a flag requiring further investigation, particularly within the health sector where ‘was not brought’ should raise professional curiosity. Nottingham CCG commissioned a promotional animation which has been well received by partners and welcomed by Chairs of other Local Safeguarding Boards and their partners;

(e)  the Quality Assurance Sub-Group of NCSCB has completed audits on Child Sexual Exploitation, out of hours referrals to Children’s Social Care, quality of plans for cases where the concern was physical abuse and medical neglect;

(f)  emerging issues such as the use of online media and forums, county lines drug trafficking, child sexual exploitation, modern slavery and radicalisation are issues where awareness is raised with partners. Initially several Police forces were treating children involved in county lines activity as compliant criminals whereas now there is a better understanding that they are exploited victims;

(g)  child neglect is a very complicated issue with wide ranging elements. Domestic violence can be very closely associated to child abuse and there is a lot of very effective partnership working to prevent female genital mutilation.

Questions from the Committee were responded to by Chris, John and Alison as follows:

(h)  the Police and Crime Commissioner regularly attends regional safeguarding meetings, particularly when there are issues such as exploitation;

(i)  although every effort is made to ensure that every child is known to the systems and can be monitored, realistically no absolute guarantees can be given that this is the case. Children from traveller communities are usually identified only if their parents or carers apply for a school place, medical treatment or benefits. Where children are known  ...  view the full minutes text for item 32