Working Together to Safeguard Children

March 2013

(WT2013)

New document has 5 chapters

• Assessing need and providing help• Organisational Responsibilities• Local Safeguarding Childrens Boards (LSCB)• Learning and Improvement Framework• Child death reviews

Assessing need and providing help

Change Salford Response

Issues to be resolved

One assessment lasting a maximum of 45 days

•Working group established to consider the: •one assessment form•appropriate check points.•Transition points between teams•Audit tool to change

•Regional assessment agreed but not yet completed•OLM need to change present system or a local solution will need to be found.

Early Help •Salford has a clear well understood thresholds document. This is presently a City Council document and now needs to be owned and managed by the board•Meeting called to discuss how the document will need to change to reflect the wider brief of early help

•Early help in WTSC 13 is a much wider brief than EIP this requires further involvement of partners and a clear understanding of how they fit into an early help model.

Outcome based •Audit tool being rewritten by QA team to consider how we measure effectiveness and quality of social work

•Difficult to measure early help as not at social care level•Training for audit pool will need to take place.

Organisational Responsibilities Section 10 &11 expanded to include Police, Health, Adult care and British Transport police

•No real change for Salford, will need to make links with BT Police. Salford have a robust section 11 process

LADO Salford have a designated LADO

Board will need to agree the 3rd category again as the board agreed a wider remit in 2010

Local Safeguarding Board Chair of the board •Work will need to be

undertaken to evidence the link with the Chief Executive and the Lead Member

Performance information •Work will need to be undertaken to evidence how the JSNA has been utilised to devise the performance framework.

Board membership •All types of schools to be included, the schools safeguarding group already considering how this will happen

Learning and Improvement FrameworkNational Panel •Where a notification is

made to Ofsted and DfE it will now be mandatory to ask a panel of experts if this is the correct decision if the decision is not to hold a SCR. Salford will need to ensure decisions are robust and evidenced

•Not clear who will make up the panel•Clear mandate from Government that there are not enough SCR’s being held therefore the panel could have a bias towards holding reviews

SCR’s •Able to make decisions regarding the kind of review used.•Salford used three systems in last 2 years good knowledge in existence.

Child Death Reviews

• No changes to the role and function of the child death overview panel.