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Staffordshire Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements 2024

Safeguarding children requires a multi-agency response. It cannot be done by local authorities alone. This is true across all aspects of safeguarding arrangements: from the frontline practitioner identifying a child at risk and making a referral to the local authority, through to leaders determining local strategic and operational responses to child protection issues. We as local partners must get this right for all children who experience abuse or neglect.

With the revisions to the statutory guidance Working together to safeguard children all Safeguarding Children Partnerships will have refreshed their multi-agency safeguarding arrangements for children, and we, as Lead Safeguarding Partners are committed, through our Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements, to work together to ensure a joined-up local response to reduce the risk of harm to children.

Introduction and expectations for multi-agency working

Protecting children from abuse, neglect and exploitation requires multi-agency join up and cooperation at all levels. Local organisations and agencies that work with children and families play a significant and often statutory role when it comes to safeguarding children.

Many of these organisations and agencies have a duty under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to ensure their functions are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

The way in which these organisations and agencies work together is known as Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASAs). Across local areas the three Safeguarding Partners (named below) are responsible and accountable for the effectiveness of multi-agency working and to identify and address system issues.

In this publication the three Safeguarding Partners and their relevant partners have set out how they will work together to safeguarding children in Staffordshire.

Expectations for strong multi-agency and multi-disciplinary working is structured across three levels for strategic leaders, senior and middle managers and front-line staff. They apply to all agencies, not just the statutory partners, and all practitioners working with children, specifically these include, all health services, probation services, youth offending services, education providers and childcare settings, and voluntary and third sector organisations.

As well as the Chief Executives of local authorities, Chief Executives of Integrated Care Boards (ICB), and Chief Constables of police, Strategic leaders may also include Police and Crime Commissioners, Chief Executives of multi-academy trusts and Chief Executives of NHS Trusts.

Senior and middle managers may include Directors of Children’s services, heads of services and team managers in local authorities, Designated and Named Professionals (GP, Nurse, Doctor, Midwife) in health, the Chief Superintendent and Chief Inspector (and equivalents) in police, Head Teachers, Designated Safeguarding Leads and Nursery Managers in education.

And those in direct practice may include frontline Social Workers, Health Visitors, Police Constables, Teachers and those working in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector. This list is not exhaustive as decision making structures will differ by area, and local areas should consider how best to apply these standards to match their local approach.

Multi-agency expectations set out for each level are detailed within Working Together, but for ease they are categorised under the following headings

  • Collaborate
  • Learn
  • Resource
  • Include
  • Mutual challenge

 

Strategic leadership and accountability

Functions of Lead Safeguarding Partners – LSPs

Strong, joined-up leadership and clear accountability is critical to effective multi-agency safeguarding, bringing together the various organisations and agencies. It is therefore important that the head of each statutory safeguarding partner agency plays an active role in these arrangements.

The LSPs are jointly responsible for ensuring the proper involvement of and oversight of all relevant agencies, and act as a team, as opposed to a voice for their agency alone.

LSPs for Staffordshire are:

LSPs will meet every six months to focus on their core functions:

  • Set the strategic direction, vision, and culture of their local safeguarding arrangements, including agreeing and reviewing shared priorities and the resource required to deliver services effectively.
  • Oversee and enable their organisation’s individual contribution to the shared priorities, ensuring strong governance, accountability, and reporting mechanisms to hold their delegates to account for the delivery of agency commitments.
  • Review and sign off key partnership documents: published multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, including plans for independent scrutiny, shared annual budget, yearly report, and local threshold document.
  • Provide shared oversight of learning from independent scrutiny, serious incidents, local child safeguarding practice reviews, and national reviews, ensuring recommendations are implemented and have a demonstrable impact on practice (as set out in the yearly report).
  • Ensure multi-agency arrangements have the necessary level of business support, including intelligence and analytical functions, such as an agreed data set providing oversight and a robust understanding of practice.
  • Ensure all relevant agencies, including education settings, are clear on their role and contribution to multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
  • Commit to working closely with the Stoke-on-Trent Safeguarding Children Partnership to improve safeguarding outcomes where there are identified common areas of concern, recognising that children and families move across local authority boundaries and will benefit from an aligned response to key strategic areas. 

Whilst accountable for the effectiveness and outcomes of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, they will consider how the experiences of children and families influence and shape local arrangements, paying particular attention to how those with protected characteristics will engage in service design.

The vision of the Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (SSCP):

We want our children to be happy, healthy, loved, and safe.

The Safeguarding Partners recognise that for it to be successful it will strive and attain to the following:

Mission: As a partnership we will be relentless in working together to focus on children providing the right help, support and protection as early as possible to evidence impactful and successful outcomes.

Shared Values: Collaborative (Building it together), Willing to Learn, Inclusive, Caring, Accountable.

Shared Expectations: Collaborate, Learn, Resource, Include and Mutual Challenge.

Regional Boundaries

Delivering multi-agency safeguarding arrangements

Whilst much of the work of the LSPs will focus on their joint functions and in maintaining strategic oversight, the delivery of the multi-agency safeguarding functions will be delegated to a Delegated Safeguarding Partner (hereafter referred to as DSPs).

In Staffordshire the DSPs are:

 

DSPs will take decisions on behalf of the LSPs and hold their sectors to account, although ultimate accountability remains with the LSPs. The DSP takes responsibility for the delivery of the statutory functions and includes oversight of the quality and compliance of the agreed shared priority areas.

They will agree processes to provide assurance that multi-agency practice is reviewed and operating well and respond accordingly from their own agencies to engage and improve operational systems and practice with additional capacity and resource should the evidence suggest things are not working well.

DSPs will meet quarterly to ensure they have sufficient oversight and detail on key topics and issues to maintain their statutory responsibilities. They will use the SSCP escalation policy to escalate risk or issues they cannot resolve for resolution with the LSPs. (See escalation section)

Joint functions include:

  • Delivery and monitoring of multi-agency priorities and procedures to protect and safeguard children in the local area, in compliance with their published arrangements and local thresholds.
  • Close partnership working and engagement with education (at strategic and operational level) and other relevant agencies, allowing better identification of and response to harm.
  • The implementation of effective information sharing arrangements between agencies, including data sharing that facilitates joint analysis between partner agencies.
  • Delivery of high-quality and timely rapid reviews and local child safeguarding practice reviews, with the impact of learning from local and national reviews and independent scrutiny clearly evidenced in yearly reports.
  • The provision of appropriate multi-agency safeguarding professional development and training.
  • Seeking of, and responding to, feedback from children and families about their experiences of services and co-designing services to ensure children from different communities and groups can access the help and protection they need.

To support delivery of these functions, the LSPs have appointed Victoria Lee as the partnership chair for the multi-agency arrangements.

The partnership chair will

  • Lead with authority and enable resource allocation
  • Ensure a business management function with adequate resources and capacity to support the partnership chair
  • Encourage a rigorous and effective independent scrutiny function that provides challenge to the Safeguarding Partners (see section on Independent Scrutiny)
  • More broadly they will provide greater continuity across local area and act as the conduit between the DSPs and LSPs, providing feedback and escalating collective risk and issues to LSPs as necessary.

The DSPs will ensure that, with the support of, the business management and independent scrutiny function the following activities and assurance will be delivered:

  • Oversee and be responsible for the analysis, intelligence, and timely collection of data to support functions, such as:
    • Getting an accurate local picture of how effectively services are being delivered through regular communication across relevant agencies
    • Advising the statutory Safeguarding Partners of the key challenges and emerging priorities
    • Coordinating the joint multi-agency strategic plan, ensuring that statutory Safeguarding Partners and their delegates feed into and own the plan in the local area and
    • Overseeing the quality of practice and local outcomes for children and families
  • Review and promote consistent understanding and application of referral and intervention thresholds across agencies so that the right children receive the right support at the right time
  • Coordinate the views of children, and families about the services they receive and feed key learning, issues, and good practice to the LSPs
  • Support effective engagement with relevant agencies in their local area so that they understand their roles and responsibilities, which includes strengthening the input from education providers at operational and strategic level decision-making
  • Use learning from local practice and serious incident notifications to prompt reflection and analysis of where improvements need to be secured, and action taken
  • Strengthen system conditions for effective multi-agency child protection work

The chair will be reported to on regular multi-agency operational meetings and subgroups, to ensure common threads across the arrangements.

Listen to the Delegated Safeguarding Partners setting out their vision for the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements here

Relevant agencies are key to successful arrangements and include those organisations and agencies whose involvement are required to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children.

Strong, effective multi-agency safeguarding arrangements should be responsive to local circumstances and engage the right people in a collaborative way. This approach requires flexibility from all relevant agencies, to enable joint identification and response to existing and emerging needs, and to agree priorities to improve outcomes for children.

The LSPs have set out in this document which organisations and agencies they require to work with them as relevant agencies. They are:

  • All local education providers including Multi-Academy Trusts and childcare providers working with children up to the age of 18, including alternative provision, pupil referral units and further education will be included because of the pivotal role they play in children’s daily lives and amount of time they spend with them. A list of all local education providers can be found here. Get Information about Schools – GOV.UK. Existing partnership arrangements account for education and childcare providers through various platforms that include but are not limited to schools’ forums, Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) virtual termly briefings, and annual performance activity including self-assessments against their duties under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 and Section 157/175 of the Education Act 2002.
  • Childcare providers are consulted and included in the arrangements via the existing Early Years Reference Group and Early Years Safeguarding Forum. A list of local providers can be found here Staffordshire Connects | Looking for Childcare and Early Years Services for Families
  • HMYOI Werrington (represented via the Review of Restraint subgroup)
  • Probation
  • CAFCASS
  • British Transport police (via the Child Exploitation and Missing Strategic Group)
  • Voluntary, Charity, Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations, and sports clubs. There are many different services which contribute to the whole system of support and pathways and processes are in place to enable families and practitioners to navigate this system across Staffordshire. Please refer to the following link Activities – SCVYS Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services
  • Home Office in respect of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC)
  • All local health provider organisations: Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust (MPFT), University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM), University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (UHDB), North Staffordshire Combined Health Care Trust (NSCHT), including the five Primary Care Networks that oversee all GPs across Staffordshire. Health providers will all be engaged through the safeguarding collaborative which includes primary care and is focused on all age safeguarding, provider organisations. It is recognised that MPFT and UHNM are the largest health provider of children’s services and will therefore be key to effective arrangements for keeping children safe.
  • Judiciary service
  • District and Borough Councils. Representatives will include the Chief Executives and senior leaders from each of the eight Borough and District councils.

As a relevant agency, organisations must act in accordance with the local safeguarding arrangements, and have therefore:

  • A have a clear understanding of its responsibilities in relation to safeguarding children locally, and how it will discharge them
  • Co-operate with Safeguarding Partners to improve, implement, and monitor effectiveness of the local safeguarding arrangements
  • Share information and data about safeguarding issues and concerns affecting the children involved in their organisation to contribute to local priorities
  • Ensure local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements are fully understood, and rigorously applied within their organisation 

Relevant agencies will be required to nominate a lead for their agency who will undertake roles and responsibilities in line with the refreshed governance arrangements across Staffordshire, and where possible avoid duplication or create gaps in the work to keep children safe.

Plans to engage with relevant partners are mapped out under the SSCP Communications and Engagement Plan and will ensure that the LSPs provide an easy to read and accessible arrangements document, along with exercising the relevant communication channels to share messages and updates about the arrangements.

Childrens version

 

Produced in collaboration with the Voice Project

Arrangements for Independent Scrutiny of the effectiveness of the arrangements

Independent Scrutiny is aimed at driving continuous improvement and providing assurance that arrangements are working effectively for children, families, and practitioners. It considers learning from local child safeguarding practice reviews, national reviews and thematic reports.

The role of independent scrutiny is to ensure the effectiveness of multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding children, including reviewing serious child safeguarding cases. It complements inspections by independent inspectorates and Joint Targeted Area Inspections (JTAI).

With no standard model, various Independent Scrutiny approaches exist nationwide. In 2023, the Safeguarding Partners chose to continue their current Independent Scrutiny arrangements for 23-24 while considering new plans. They prioritise involving children, families, and professionals in the process, ensuring thorough oversight of safeguarding practices.

In Staffordshire, scrutiny is conducted through a 2-year contractual arrangement with an Independent Scrutineer, who provides an annual workplan for the LSPs. The workplan for 24/25 is outlined below.

Independent Scrutiny Work Plan 2024/25

The Independent Scrutineer will evaluate the effectiveness of the arrangements for children, families, and practitioners, as well as assess how the Safeguarding Partners are providing leadership. This will be reported through an agreed work plan based on the requirements outlined in Working Together 2023.

How Scrutiny Will Be Delivered

A variety of methods will be used to scrutinise multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. These will include conversations with children, young people, and their families, staff interviews, data analysis, multi-agency and single audits, focus groups, and practice observations.

Upon completing these activities, the Independent Scrutineer will draft a report for the LSPs and DSPs, including recommendations for their consideration. The SSCP will then develop an action plan following the scrutiny assessments. Recommendations or improvement actions may be implemented by individual agencies or the multi-agency partnership.

Involvement of Children and Young People

The opinions of children, young people, adults, and their families/carers will be central to all aspects of scrutiny to determine the impact of the partnership and the safeguarding arrangements.

Watch the children from the Voice Project interview with Staffordshire Independant Scrutineer Ian Vinall on his role as scrutineer here 

Equity, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EEDI)

The scrutiny work will evaluate whether individuals or groups are treated fairly and equally, considering their protected characteristics. This includes acknowledging and celebrating differences. The work will also assess how children, young people, families, and professionals feel welcomed and valued.

Review of Scrutiny Arrangements

The scrutiny arrangements in Staffordshire will be reviewed annually by the LSPs.

Scrutiny Assessment Judgements

Lead Safeguarding Partners and their Delegated Safeguarding Partners, along with education providers, will understand and carry out their responsibilities with active strategic oversight of local planning, implementation, and review.

The wider Safeguarding Partners, including education and all relevant agencies, will be actively involved in safeguarding children. Children, young people, and families will be informed about and engaged with plans for safeguarding children. Appropriate quality assurance functions are in place for data collection, audit, and information sharing.

There is a process for identifying and investigating learning from local and national case reviews. An active program for multi-agency safeguarding children training and workforce development will be maintained.

Scrutiny Areas for 24/25

Multi-Agency Child Protection Arrangements

  • Ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of changes to the safeguarding arrangements in response to Working Together 2023.
  • Engagement of the wider safeguarding partners in safeguarding children, focusing on early years, schools, and further education.
  • Understanding and effectiveness of arrangements to safeguard children from child sexual abuse.
  • Ongoing assurance

To support the work of the Safeguarding Partnership and its role in assurance, the Independent Scrutineer will become an invited member of the partnership subgroups to review the effectiveness of the delegated multi-agency arrangements for scrutiny and assurance.

 

What do our scrutiny arrangements mean for children?

Produced in collaboration with the Voice Project Staffordshire

How the Safeguarding Partners will share information and data safely and effectively, using arrangements that clearly set out the processes and the principles for sharing

Much of what we know about learning from reviews locally and nationally pinpoint the lack of information sharing as a recurring theme, and there are factors that can impact on how, when and where information is shared to gain a full picture of a child’s needs and circumstances. Effective information sharing is built upon some key principles and include recording, understanding the significance of information, however small, sharing information quickly but safely, and catching concerns early through proactive action.

Both the national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and the Care Review acknowledged the importance of robust information sharing arrangements across local Safeguarding Partners and made recommendations in this area. Specifically, the Care Review called for Safeguarding Partners to confirm they have information sharing agreements in place.

The SSCP Information Sharing Agreement defines the information that will be shared and transferred between the organisations listed and arrangements for assisting compliance with relevant legislation and guidance including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA).

How the Safeguarding Partners will use data and intelligence to assess the effectiveness of the help being provided to children and families, including early help

In order to understand the effectiveness of their safeguarding arrangements and to maintain a high standard of continuous improvement for children and families, the Safeguarding Partners have developed a Performance and Quality Assurance framework, a Multi-Agency and Interagency Audit Framework and the Learning Hub Model Framework  all of which sets out how they, along with their relevant partners intend to build on the existing accountability by each partner in meeting their statutory duties under Working Together 2023. By using the analysis from the performance and quality assurance information gathered they will evidence effective and safe practice against the priority areas using a variety of functions (see below) that will support their arrangements.

 

The different elements, which when viewed together, should provide a picture of the effectiveness of safeguarding system and practice within Staffordshire as well as the outcomes for the children and families who have received help or support which can be evidenced through the Family Hubs and more broadly via the Early Help guide Early Help System Guide (publishing.service.gov.uk)

The Partnership will also engage and seek assurance, where relevant from other Strategic Partnerships and their activity including the Health and Wellbeing Board and their Joint Strategic Needs Assessment, the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Adult Safeguarding Partnership Board, Domestic Abuse Commissioning and Development Board, Violence Reduction Alliance and Community Safety Partnerships particularly in respect of preparation and plans for Joint Targeted Area Inspections (JTAIs).

Regular reporting against the annual workplan will provide a good balance of sources and types of information.

The arrangements for commissioning and publishing local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, and the process for undertaking local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (CSPR), setting out the arrangements for embedding learning across organisations and agencies

Responsibility for how a system learns lessons from serious child safeguarding incidents rests at a national level with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel  (the National Panel) and at a local level with the three Lead Safeguarding Partners.

The purpose of a CSPR is to explore how practice can be improved through changes to the system itself. Mechanisms within the partnership arrangements are set up in a way that enables swift identification of those serious child incidents which, in their view, raise issues of importance in relation to their area.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review subgroup has the delegated responsibility for monitoring all cases where children are the subject of a notification, rapid review and/ or local review process and have therefore suffered serious harm. Whilst being cognisant of the Child Death processes the subgroup brings about greater alignment of the statutory duties to encourage a shared responsibility and greater oversight and understanding of recurring themes, or emerging concerns.

An agreed process for commissioning and publishing reviews is in place and forms part of the regional work with partnerships across the West Midlands that includes the regional CSPR toolkit and practice guidance  for conducting reviews along with access to a pool of high-quality, experienced and professional lead reviewers.

The commissioning and delivery of training, and how it will be monitored for impact

The SSCP provides a series of multi-agency safeguarding learning and development opportunities including three core training products, additional topic-based products, as well as events, briefing sessions and conferences.

Training products and events are just a small part in developing practice and increasing the confidence and competency of the children’s workforce and the SSCP encourages those working with children and young people to commit to their own learning and development. A dedicated page  on the SSCP website contains a wide range of resources and information on safeguarding topics for practitioners, mangers and leaders to access, some of which have been adapted to enable greater access but to also cater for the pace at which digital opportunities evolve.

Commissioning takes account of local authority Procurement Routes & Contract Values, whilst the mechanisms by which impact is monitored is facilitated through the performance and quality assurance functions within the business team and reported into the subgroups for further scrutiny.

The LSP have agreed the level of funding needed to deliver the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. This includes consideration of business and analytical support, independent scrutiny, infrastructure, and core functions including local children safeguarding practice reviews, multi-agency training and learning events. It is the responsibility of the LSPs to ensure that adequate funding is allocated and spent in line with agreed priorities.

Funding arrangements from the statutory Safeguarding Partners are equitable and agreed by the LSPs. Funding will be reviewed on an ongoing basis to ensure that they can meet the financial needs of the arrangements.

The funding is transparent to children and families in the area, and the individual contributions of Safeguarding Partners and relevant agencies and is clearly set out in reporting – see below.

Funding arrangements consist of contributions from each of the statutory Safeguarding Partner, and includes income generated from the delivery of multi-agency training events. Details of which can be found here Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership – Annual Report 2023/24 – Staffordshire Safeguarding Children Partnership

Incorporating the perspectives of children and families is a fundamental aspect of the local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. Although various methods are employed, the next step involves collaborative efforts to ensure that the child’s voice remains consistently central to practice, and that appropriate support is provided. Furthermore, at the local level, organisations and agencies have established clear protocols for working together to safeguard children and promote their welfare.

Children and Young People’s views are important and there are a range of ways to hear from children and young people across our partnership, and an acknowledgement that doing this together in a coordinated and planned way is more effective and builds better relationships with participants.

In 2022, Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services (SCVYS) supported the creation of a Staffordshire Co-production Promise for the Children and Families system, as well as creating a toolkit to support those people responsible for providing services to enable them to do co-production well.

The Promise includes a local definition of co-production and some shared commitments to improve the experience of support as well as the outcomes from that support for families.

Staffordshire’s Co-production Promise – SCVYS Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services

Furthermore, Partners have been successful in securing funding for a long-term programme of community research. A cross section of different young people has been established to ensure a wide range of views are collected to inform decision makers of the things that matter most to them. Whilst this programme will not be exclusively about safeguarding it is important to recognise that they may have views on issues related to keeping them safe and therefore there may be a role and relationship with the local arrangements.

In addition, there is a Staffordshire Children and Young People’s Voices Steering Group. This group is formed of partners from across a range of agencies including the Local Authority, Health, Police, VCSE and others who have a role in children’s lives. This group has three primary objectives

  • To co-ordinate the partnership’s engagement activity so that where possible we do it once and well.
  • To provide a summary of the engagement activity to the partnership to identify themes, trends and further areas for improvement
  • To provide a framework for how we assess the effectiveness of the engagement activity across the partnership and
  • To raise the quality of the engagement with children and young people across the partnership.

They also act as an advisory group to other partnerships on aspects related to voice and engagement of children and young people and ensure that children hear what we did with their views.

To improve the arrangements for evidencing the effectiveness of the voice of children in affecting change the partners will commit to

  • Maintaining regular and meaningful participation in these meetings,
  • Assess our effectiveness once every 2 years,
  • Receive reports from this group when there are themes related to children’s safety and keeping them protected from harm and
  • Promote and support their work to maximise the engagement and impact of their work.

The Partnership acknowledge that they along with their relevant partners need to work better in order to be prepared, engender positive and open communication and to provide feedback that illustrates the changes that have been made so that children know that their input is shaping the way the Partnership works.

Safeguarding Partners and relevant agencies are required to act in accordance with the arrangements for their area and will be expected to understand each other’s differences of views and resolve such differences locally.

LSPs therefore have an agreed system to resolve disputes and issues between partners within multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. This system is outlined within the SSCP Escalation policy and may be applied to isolated issues or incidents such as those on the front line between partners as well as any intractable recurring ones.

Effective and mature arrangements demonstrate how the LSPs and their delegates make use of key stakeholders in their local systems, that might include Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), lead members, and/or independent persons, who will be brought to the table to assist them to settle on a solution.  If the issue remains unresolved between the three Safeguarding Partners and their local networks the next stage of escalation is to the Secretary of State.

In Staffordshire all agencies are committed to offering children, young people and their families, help and support at the earliest opportunity. Our Continuum of Need document was refreshed by multi-agency partners in 2022 and is well embedded. It demands a whole systems approach to service delivery to ensure families receive early help as soon as difficulties start to emerge, but also outlines when action must be taken to protect children from serious harm.

The Continuum of Need is enhanced by a robust Early Help Strategy which supports partners to consider how early help is delivered in partnership with children, young people and families to improve life chances, particularly for families experiencing complex and multiple difficulties. 

The arrangements will be revised following the release of the social care policy statement due at the end of October.

Yearly report and publication

Under Section 16G of the Children Act 2004 the Safeguarding Partners must publish a yearly report setting out what has been done during that 12-month period. Starting from 2024 it must be published by the end of September and focus on reflective work undertaken the previous financial year.

Safeguarding Partners will jointly report on the activity undertaken, ensuring it is transparent and easily accessible to families and professionals. An easy-to-read version alongside the final report will be published on the Partnership website. The focus of these reports will be on multi-agency priorities, learning, impact, evidence, and improvement.

Reports include:

  • What the partnership has done as a result of the arrangements, including on child safeguarding practice reviews, and
  • How effective these arrangements have been in practice
  • The contribution of each safeguarding partner to the functioning and structure of the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
  • Any themes emanating from aggregated methods of scrutiny
  • Evidence of how the Safeguarding Partners are ensuring the adequate representation and input of education at both the operational and strategic levels of the arrangements
  • The breakdown of costs in delivering the arrangements for that period, including the financial contributions of individual partners, any changes to funding and an assessment of impact and value for money of this funding
  • An overview of how data is being used to encourage learning within the arrangements and evidence of how information sharing has improved practice and outcomes
  • This is not an exhaustive list of requirements, please refer to page 41 of Working Together for a full breakdown.
  • Yearly reports will include a review of restraint within the Young Offenders Institute at HM Werrington, the findings of which will be reported to the Youth Justice Board, the Youth Custody Service and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.
  • The report will be made widely available, with copies sent to the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel who will identify any issues that may need escalation to a national level and Foundations (What Works Centre for Children and Families), given its focus on learning within seven days of publication.
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