Agenda item

Report of the Statutory Scrutiny Officer

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Portfolio Holder for Children, Young People and Education, John Matravers, Head of Safeguarding and Partnerships, and Ailsa Barr, Director for Children’s Integrated Services, presented the report and delivered a presentation and highlighted the following:

(a)  Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Partnership was established in accordance with the Children and Social Work Act 2017 and Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018.  It provides the safeguarding arrangements under which the safeguarding partners and relevant agencies work together to co-ordinate their safeguarding services, identify, and respond to the needs of children in the city, commission and publish local child safeguarding practice reviews and provide scrutiny to ensure the effectiveness of the arrangements;

(b)  the safeguarding partners responsible for the safeguarding arrangements under the Partnership are Nottingham City Council, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board and Nottinghamshire Police. An Independent Scrutineer acts as a constructive critical friend to the Partnership, encouraging reflection on practice. Other relevant agencies also support the Partnership;

(c)  the strategic priorities of the Partnership in 2022-23 were to promote, monitor, coordinate and evaluate multi agency effectiveness in safeguarding children across the child’s journey, to strengthen and support a competent and equipped workforce that is committed to learning and developing safeguarding practice with the assurance that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and to evidence the impact of the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Partnership (NCSCP);

(d)  the Partnership’s Business Plan has 7 priorities: tackling and reducing Child Exploitation, implementing the Harmful Sexual Behaviour Action Plan, ensuring that the voice and lived experience of children is integral to the development and delivery of services to children and families across Nottingham City, recognising and responding to the diverse population of Nottingham City’s children, delivering the Nottingham City Safeguarding Children Partnership Neglect Strategy, understanding the impact of Covid-19, and providing leadership and ensuring core duties are met in line with Working Together 2018 and other relevant legislation;

(e)  the Partnership has developed a Threshold of Need Toolkit, to strengthen the effectiveness of practice and support the need for a child and their family;

(f)  tackling neglect must continue to be a priority if children’s life chances and poor outcomes later in life are to be improved. A toolkit and a number of informative videos have been produced to promote this message. The Partnership has also developed a video resource on Professional Curiosity to further strengthen practice and knowledge in response to learning emerging from Domestic Homicide reviews;

(g)  the Partnership has held the Council to account in relation to the recent Ofsted Inspection and assurance visits, and is working together to address some of the key areas of improvement and to ensure system oversight and engagement in the improvement plan;

(h)  in 2023-24 the Partnership will re-focus scrutiny on the issue of safe and supportive transitions from children’s to adult’s services. The pace and impact of the Learning and Development Sub-group will be developed so that learning can be disseminated quickly using a range of methods to those who need it.

In response to questions from the Committee and during subsequent discussion the following points were made:

(i)  the voice of the child can be harder to capture if the family does not speak English. Interpreters are commissioned and documents translated as appropriate;

(j)  if a child is a young carer then their voice must be heard as well as the parent’s in medical situations, and understanding that there are different perspectives. There are toolkits to help with this and work is being undertaken with GP practices;

(k)  the priorities are set by the Strategic Leadership Group. These are limited to the resources available and matters arising within services,  but are focused on having the greatest impact;

(l)  social worker caseloads are decreasing to a more manageable level thanks to recent improvement work that has been undertaken;

(m)if a child is at risk of serious harm, the Partnership has a responsibility to notify the national panel within 5 days, and then complete a rapid review within 5 days. 14 of these have been completed since the establishment of the Partnership, 2 of which were used as examples of good practice. Learning is taken from these and disseminated to all partners;

(n)  decisions on what level of support is required are taken by the Multi-Agency Support Hub (MASH) which is run by the Council but has practitioners from all sectors. This ensures consistency of service, making sure everyone has access to the services required. Partners also have specialists, as a first port of all, such as the Designated Safeguarding Leads in schools;

(o)  funding from the Partnership is sourced from each of the 3 statutory partners. This funds learning and development and the independent scrutineer. The amount of funding required is reviewed annually;

(p)  the videos produced by the Partnership are collectively owned by the Partnership and freely available on YouTube. They are shared on social media and at face to face meetings.

Resolved

(1)  that the partnership continues to focus on recognising the voice of the child, and ensure that the Council and partners continue to improve on how they communicate with children with language barriers;

(2)  work to disseminate information and videos to a wider range of organisations outside the partnership;

(3)  continue being pro-active in any aspect of children’s’ lives where safeguarding is concerned.