Www.safenetwork.org.uk Adapting to Change : Working Together Kevin Garrod, Head of National...

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Adapting to Change : Working Together

Kevin Garrod, Head of National Partnerships and Outreach Children England / Safe Network


This afternoon’s objectives

1. To help colleagues understand change including Munro and Working Together

2. To help delegates to engage with the formal consultation on Working Together

3. To introduce delegates to the new arrangements for Disclosure and Barring

4. To provide colleagues with the opportunity to participate in the associated consultation defining proportionate supervision for

unregulated activity

Adapting to Change : Working Together


What is Working Together

• Since 1986, formal statutory guidance on interagency working and child protection

• Evolved and enlarged over time

• Frames the role of Local Safeguarding Children Boards

• This edition, which is radically smaller, aims to help professionals understand what they need to do, and what they can expect of one another.

• Is statutory guidance and should be read and followed by Chief Executives, Directors of Children’s Services, LSCB chairs and senior managers within organisations (including police, health, schools, early years and childcare providers, adult social care, probation and prison services) that commission and provide services for children and families.


What's being consulted on?

Working Together to Safeguard Children: • Draft guidance on what is expected of organisations,

individually and jointly, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;

Managing Individual Cases: The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need / Families• Draft guidance on undertaking assessments of children in need; and

Statutory Guidance on Learning and Improvement: • Proposed new arrangements for Serious Case Reviews (SCRs),

reviews of child deaths and other learning processes led by Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs).


What documents do they replace?

• Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010);

• The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (2000);

• Assessing Children in Need and their Families: Practice Guidance (2000); and

• Statutory guidance on making arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children under section 11 of the Children Act 2004 (2007).


Key themes for the VCS

Continuity and change

• It changes what legal guidance says about the VCS role in a multi-agency context

Early help, assessment and case management

• It includes an emphasis on early help• It requires frameworks to be developed locally rather than a reliance on

central prescription

Leadership and learning

• It is underpinned by a stronger focus on the quality of practice, and by individual organisations’ professionalism and decision making

• It introduces new ways of working in relation to serious case reviews and other management reviews

Outcomesfor children & young people

Trya HenryJasmine Beckford Ricky Neave Lauren Wright Victoria Climbie Anna Kouao

ECM 2003 Children Act 2004

Peter Connelly Khyra Ishaq

Children’s Centres

Extended Services

Integrated Youth

ServicesCAF

Contact pointISA/VBS

Local Safeguarding

Children BoardsWorkforce

Development

Munro Review &Progress

Child CentredEarly Help Quality of practice , its effectiveness and risk

Heywood

Localism Austerity

Troubled Families Welfare reform

Integrated services


Continuity and Change

The State and the VCS

1. Poverty, its relief and charity synonymous 2. VCS expands first as a modern society emerges 3. Post 1867 Reform the state begins to fill up the gaps 4. In the Welfare state the situation is reversed with VCS

plugging holes 5. Big central, small local, the state waxes and wanes 6. A (or the) Perfect Storm 7. Sector’s role is historically restricted by a lack of

consistency and coherence



Defines responsibilities

• Director of Public Health in relation to JSNA

• The role of the local authority in bringing partners together and reconfirms the duty to cooperate (section 10)

Failure…often the result of insufficient priority to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.


What has changed for the sector?

• The context has changed from being one where there is a presumption of inclusion of the sector to one where there is an option to do so if there is a local demand for this.

• The only exception to this is in situations where the sector is commissioned to provide services (usually statutory), where S11 applies.

• Be careful what you wish for




Specific examples changes for the VCS

• Para 11 – not included in list of agencies for whom the guidance is intended. Old WT (pp22-23) categorises roles by the level and type of contact with children, so VCS is automatically included.

• Paras 15-52 – no references to sector’s relationship with S11 except at end of Table A where contracted services are mentioned. Old guidance said that VCS organisations providing non-commissioned services should still take account of the guidance and follow it as far as possible.

• No longer included as members of LSCBs although para 67 does say that

the Board should 'either include ...or be able to draw on in its ongoing work, appropriate expertise and advice from all relevant sectors. This includes ...the VCS.‘ Old WT (p105, para3.81) sets out VCS membership



What is Section 11?

• Refers to Section 11 of the Children Act 2004

• Places a duty on key persons and bodies to make arrangements to ensure their functions are carried out with regard to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

• The new guidance replaces 8 ‘key functions’ and 11 ‘overall principles which underpin work with children and their families’ with 6 ‘key arrangements.’


Key components of section 11 • A clear line of accountability and governance within and across organisations for the

commissioning and provision of services designed to safeguard and promote the welfare of children;

• A board-level lead to take senior leadership responsibility for the organisation’s safeguarding arrangements;

• a culture of listening to and engaging in dialogue with children and taking account of their wishes and feelings both in individual decisions and the establishment or development and improvement of services;

• Arrangements to share relevant information;

• A designated professional lead (or, for health provider organisations, a named professional) for safeguarding. Their role is to support other professionals in their agencies to recognise and respond to the possible abuse and neglect of a child or young person; and

• Appropriate supervision and support for staff, including undertaking safeguarding training.



Consultation Questions: Working Together

Legislative requirements

Does the draft guidance make the essential legislative requirements clear - so all organisations know what the law says they and others must do?

If not, please explain why and how you think the guidance should be made clearer.

Are any key requirements missing?

Are there any other comments you would like to make?

Refer to paragraphs 13-52 of the Working Together guidance and Annexe A. Much of paragraphs 13-52 are about individual organisations, so you might just want to see what they are rather than read these bits in detail


Early help, assessment & case management

Referral

• Introduction stresses need for children to receive the ‘right help at the right time’

• Universal services (and activities ) have a vital role in identifying and responding to abuse and neglect

• Working together and co-ordinated support,

• ‘common and shared framework for assessment’ • ‘lead professional’ and CAF synergy • link with Child in Need definition,

• Access to advice from social worker in children’s social care,

• Need to make referral if significant harm is suspected.


Early help, assessment & case management Post referral - at risk of significant harm

Page 12 of WTSC links directly to pages 7 and 8 MIC and describes what should happen post referral.

• Describes qualified social worker response time • Need for feedback to referrer on next steps • All organisations (as appropriate) contribute to assessment and

share information

• LA responsibility on involvement in meetings and • That the lead social worker has duty to ensure services are provided

to child and family in a transparency and coordinated response

• Anyone can referrer but must include information • Reinforcement of entitlement to qualified social worker dialogue

/discussion



The new draft assessment guidance

• merges guidance previously included in the old Working Together (chapter 5) on managing individual child protection cases, with guidance on assessing all children in need (a much wider group – previously dealt with under the old ‘Assessment Framework’ guidance)

• ‘is not linked to specific forms, recording processes and performance indicators’;

• ‘removes the distinction between initial and core assessments’; and is proposing to ‘remove nationally prescribed timescales’.



The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families

The guidance requires local authorities, with their partners, to ‘develop and publish their own local frameworks for assessments’.

These local frameworks must

1. ‘have at their centre the importance of assessing children and families in a way that is timely and proportionate to their needs’ and

2. must enable assessments to be carried out according to a timescale that is ‘transparent to children and families’.


Early help, assessment & case management Consultation Questions: Assessment guidance

1. Will local frameworks for assessment, which are timely and transparent, allow professionals to exercise their judgement and respond in a way that is proportionate to the needs of children and families?

2. Do you think that having an internal review point for completing assessments within your local framework, will provide sufficient control to avoid unacceptable delays for children? If not, how best might such control be achieved?

3. Are there any other comments you would like to make: e.g. Do you think the guidance is clear enough?

Refer to: pages 11-12 of the Working Together guidance and then pages 7-9 of the Assessment guidance. From page 10 onwards the Assessment guidance mainly consists of flow charts and descriptors which you may want to speed-read and focus on the parts that are of most interest.



Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and their membership

To coordinate what is done by each person or body represented on the Board for the purposes of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the area, and

To ensure the effectiveness of what is done by each such person or body for those purposes.

The LSCB’s role is to scrutinise local arrangements and it should therefore have a separate identity and an independent voice. It should not be subordinate to, nor subsumed within, other local structures in a way that might compromise it.

1. Defines geographic limits ,encourages collaboration between LSCBs, 2. Defines independent chair role and requirements 3. Defines membership and organisational attributes 4. Identifies additional partners: schools, a GP, a nurse and the VCS 5. Identifies the role of lay member, their role in linking up with community groups

and the wider public



The LSCB does not commission or deliver services. Each Board partner

retains their own existing line of accountability for safeguarding. While LSCBs do not have the power to direct other organisations they do have a role in making it clear where improvement is needed.

1. Develop local policies and procedures as specified in the regulations for how the different organisations will work together on safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children;

2. Communicate the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and participate in local planning;

3. Undertake a Serious Case Review where abuse or neglect of a child is known or suspected, a child has died, or been seriously harmed, and there is cause for concern as to the way in which the authority, their Board partners or other relevant persons have worked together to safeguard the child;

4. Review the deaths of all children who are normally resident in their area and put in place procedures to ensure that there is a coordinated response by relevant organisations to an unexpected death of a child. Statutory guidance on Learning and Improvement sets out the process that must be followed when undertaking these reviews and Serious Case Reviews;



LSCB tasks

Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of what is done by partners individually and collectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and advise them on ways to improve. This should include as a minimum:

• Assessing the effectiveness and impact of the help being provided to children and families, including early help; and

• Quality assuring practice for example through joint audits of case files involving practitioners and identifying lessons to be learned;

• Assess whether Board partners are fulfilling their section 11 and parallel duties and asking Board partners to self-evaluate;

• Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of training, including multi-agency training, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children; and

• Produce and publish an annual report on the effectiveness of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the local area.

• The guidance ,additionally identifies the parameters of any Data collection and the relationship between the LSCB its chair and the Director for Children’s Services and the Lead Member and Chief Executives of section 10/11 organisations



Statutory Guidance on Learning and Improvement

• Replaces chapters 7 and 8 of old Working Together (Child Death Reviews and Serious Case Reviews)

• Requires LSCBs to put in place a local learning and improvement framework shared across all the organisations working with children and young people

• Framework should include arrangements for reviews of all child deaths, Serious Case Reviews and all other management reviews and learning processes led by LSCBs

• Other reviews will include cases that do not meet criteria for a SCR but can provide information on how organisations work together to safeguard children and promote their welfare



Consultation Questions: LSCB’s and Serious Case Reviews

1. Does the guidance ‘set out a clear, strong role for LSCBs to monitor, challenge and hold agencies to account’?

2. Does the guidance set out what the role of a LSCB is and what you can expect from the LSCB in your area? If not, please explain why.

3. Will the new arrangements for Serious Case Reviews lead to better learning which helps to prevent future harm to children?

4. Are there any other comments you would like to make e.g. in relation to any cost implications for SCRs, to training needs for those that conduct them or take part, or to the support needs for VCS organisations that might be involved?

Refer to: pages13-16 of Working Together and to pages 1-10 of the Learning and Improvement guidance.


Thank you

To contact us

Web: http://www.safenetwork.org.uk

Twitter: @thesafenetwork

Email: [email protected]

Tel: 0116 2347217

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