Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director for Strategy and Resources

Chris Cook, Independent Chair of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board introduced the Annual Report 2015/16, highlighting the following:

(a)  partnership work within Nottingham City continues to be a strong feature in the work of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board (NCSCB). Partner agency relationships are good and challenges resolved professionally. This, along with the extensive information sharing, is one of the main features that makes NCSCB effective;

(b)  in September 2015 separate independent chairs were appointed to the Children Safeguarding Board and the Adult Safeguarding Board allowing a better focus on child safeguarding issues. The two boards continue to work together on cross cutting issues;

(c)  individual member agency performance is broadly good on inspection by the relevant bodies. Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) continues to be judged as ‘good’ by Ofsted;

(d)  Nottinghamshire Police plays a lead role in a number of sub groups including the Child Sexual Exploitation Sub-Group and are key contributors to information sharing across the region;

(e)  Schools and Education services provide a range of training aimed at staff, volunteers and governors within education providers;

(f)  Nottingham City Clinical Commissioning Group (NCCCG) are key partners, contributing across a large range of issues including domestic violence, child sexual exploitation and female genital mutilation;

(g)  NCCG are also involved in a piece of work altering the mind-set of clinicians. This work aims to note children as “not bought to appointment” rather than “did not attend” and they are looking at the impact this change in mind-set may bring about. There has been interest from other clinical commissioning groups around the UK in this work;

(h)  the Child Death Overview Panel are pleased with the reduction of natural deaths within the reporting period and continues work on educating parents around preventable deaths such as unsafe sleeping;

(i)  the Quality Assurance Sub-Group is planning a series of audits of the key partner agencies;

(j)  a range of training covering various topics continues to be offered to staff and volunteers from across the partnership, including the voluntary sector. In particular the  “Every Colleague Matters” training has already been, or will be delivered to every person who works within the Children and Vulnerable Adults workforce in the city of Nottingham;

(k)  future priorities will remain the same. Work will continue to prioritise keeping children safe from harm, including child sexual exploitation and missing children.

Following questions and comments from the board the following points were made:

(l)  a newly commissioned sub group has been set up looking at emerging issues such as trafficking, modern day slavery and refugees;

(m)  at present the NCSCB is well resourced. There are financial challenges, but partnership agencies are currently able to fund projects and programmes that are necessary;

(n)  the support of the voluntary sector is essential in the work of the NCSCB. There are financial challenges around resources and how the voluntary sector as a whole can contribute to the Board financially;

(o)  all members organisations of the Volunteers Network have certain standards that their volunteers have to meet before they start working with young people. The Quality Forum ensures that this is standard across the organisation and basic standards are written into organisations policies. These basic standards can be assessed by the NCSCB but they cannot affect the allocation of resources;

(p)  Councillor David Mellen, portfolio Holder for Early Intervention and Early Years regularly attends an Assurance meeting where the NCSCB feed back to him about ongoing work. This can then feedback to ward councillors to keep them informed on what is happening in their ward;

(q)  a robust system of feedback to partner agencies is in place. This covers work at a corporate level as well as work taking place at a local level;

(r)  there is a good level of awareness of safeguarding issues at a local level and in local meetings including those not specifically addressing services for children or child safeguarding;

(s)  a rigorous assessment of protocols within sports clubs and leisure activities is now underway to ensure that the safeguarding is fit for purpose, this includes faith groups and uniformed groups;

(t)  standard training around recognising signs of child sexual exploitation for taxi drivers and security staff has been broadly welcomed and has gained interest from a number of local councils across the UK.

RESOLVED to

(1)  thank the Independent Chair of Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board, Chris Cook, for his informative report;

(2)  add Nottingham City Safeguarding Children’s Board Annual Report 2016/17 to the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee’s Work Programme for 2017/18;

(3)  congratulate Chris Cook on his recent OBE, recognising his dedication to safeguarding children throughout his career.