Giving Children and Young People the Best Start in Life

Thursday 6th June, 2013

Schools’ safeguarding briefing for designated child protection co

ordinators

Working together 2013 Background

• Revision published and came in to force on 15th April 2013

• Over 700 pages down to 97• Statutory guidance• Part of the reforms identified by Eileen Munro• Child in focus at all stages – beginning, middle and

end• Localised services to improve outcomes• Expectation that collaborative inter-agency work will

improve outcomes for the child

Assessing need and providing help

• Strong focus on the importance of early help

• Local services to work together to provide effective services based on early assessment

• Referrals – threshold document

• feedback to explain why not met

• Information sharing

Assessing need cont’d

• Supervision – does the help given lead to a significant, positive change for the child? Is the pace of that child appropriate for the child involved?

• Within one working day of RF1 being received decision should be made about type of response (by SW)

• IA and core assessments replaced by single assessment

Organisational responsibilities

• Paragraph 4 lays out the responsibilities which schools and colleges have in respect of safeguarding

• Includes section about allegations children – this has been tightened up with all agencies required to report all allegations to the LADO within 1 working day.

LSCBs

• Role – to scrutinise local arrangements and hold partners to account

• Additional responsibilities in this document include – oversight of early help arrangements, clarifying threshold decisions and developing a local framework for learning and development

Learning and Improvement Framework

• Need to reflect on quality of service

• Learn from own practice and that of others

• Sharing of good practice

• Lessons learnt when things go wrong

• Links to QA

Serious Case Reviews

• National panel of independent experts- oversee, advise and challenge on whether to conduct SCR

• All SCRs to be published in full

• Systems approach

Keeping Children Safe in Education?

• Dfe Consultation – responses by June 20th

• No reference in address to LAs

It is for front line skilled professionals to use their own knowledge and judgement to safeguard and promote the

welfare of children in their care

Please respond……….

• https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/keeping-children-safe-in-education

Time for a break

Scenarios

Keeping procedures in mind

• Written to support schools with updating staff and to ensure staff are dealing effectively with safeguarding and CP issues

• School’s own policy and procedure should be available at the time of activity

• Most important points to remember are:-

Record and share

Feeling Safe 2013/14• The 2013 feeling safe survey is now open. This

year the survey has moved from the merlin learning platform to survey monkey.

• The survey can be found by typing in the following link:-

• Primary survey (open to Year 6 pupils) https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GHZL7X6

• Secondary survey (open to all year groups) https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BKGH3FH

DBS Update

On 17th June the DBS launches the ‘Update service’•Individuals can choose to subscribe for an annual fee of £13•Service will keep DBS certificate up to date and portable•Employer will be able to go online and check

Registered bodies will not be sent a copy of the DBS certificate.

And finally……………