WHAT IS HAPPENING?
The act provides a new framework for three key aspects of multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding children. These are:
- Creation of a national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel
- Introduction of child death reviews to replace serious case reviews (SCR)
- New arrangements for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of local children.
WHO DOES IT AFFECT?
The new arrangements introduce major changes for how local authorities, police, health and education agencies work together to safeguard children.
The removal of the requirement for each area to have a local safeguarding children board (LSCB), alongside the creation of local child practice reviews, could see many areas reconfigure local arrangements or scrap boards altogether.
With the introduction of a new system for reviewing child deaths and serious incidents, it looks likely that the role of independent LSCB chairs will change or disappear.
The creation of the national practice review panel is likely to result in the national SCR panel being scrapped.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
The act provides the opportunity to put into operation better arrangements to protect and safeguard children, says former president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services Alan Wood, who undertook a government-commissioned review of local safeguarding last year.
Wood - whose review findings formed the basis for a number of the act's provisions - says the new arrangements have been designed to help address deficiencies in local safeguarding practice and systems previously highlighted by health, police and local government leaders.
The national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel will examine cases that are highly complex or of national importance. It will also support safeguarding agencies in carrying out local reviews.
Wood says the creation of the panel is a "significant" development because "it paves the way for a national learning framework beyond the failed and discredited SCR system".
Bringing child death reviews under the leadership of the NHS and making the local clinical commissioning group and local authority "child death review partners" will ensure better co-ordination of safeguarding across regional and organisational boundaries, Wood adds.
"It creates the flexibility to arrange partnerships across several localities providing sufficient data to give real insight into the causes of, and learning from, child deaths," he says.
Wood believes the new arrangements will help the sharing of safeguarding knowledge and practice on what does and does not work, and enable leaders to build effective multi-agency partnerships more in tune with local needs.
UNRESOLVED ISSUES
"Improvement will not come about simply because the national framework and guidance is changing," Wood explains.
"Our culture has to respond by promoting the high regard we have for the professionalism of practitioners. Ensuring they know they are valued as a professional, that their professional development is a priority and their decisions are respected helps them to protect and safeguard children as best as is possible."
The new provisions will need service leaders to ensure their staff are supported to be confident, decisive and comfortable with accountability, he adds. Other barriers to improvement - such as local agencies agreeing priorities, having a child protection focus and developing a learning culture - will also need to be removed.
Wood says: "For too long, the needs of bureaucracy within local authorities, health and police have held back improvement in, for example, information sharing and the inability to take a decision on behalf of an agency requiring upward referral and approval. If this continues, it puts an individual agency above a child.
"Leadership at local level in a triad of the chief police officer, the clinical commissioning group and local authority clears the way for resolving key strategic problems, allowing practice leaders to operate with autonomy and the knowledge that their work has cross-agency agreement.
"Decisions have to be timely and effective across agencies."
Wood identifies diminishing resources across the public sector, workforce reform in social work and other professions, and rising levels of need as key challenges to delivering the vision.
It will also require individual schools to liaise more with social care, health and the police.
"If others respond to the new arrangements, such as Ofsted's positive approach to inspection, what an individual school does to keep children safe, implementation of the What Works centre, a strong national assessment and accreditation system for social workers and a continuing focus on innovation at the DfE, we will make a real impact on delivering consistently high-quality child protection practice," he adds.
KEY DECISIONS FOR NEW LOCAL SAFEGUARDING ARRANGEMENTS
- Area for new arrangements
- Vision for partnership working
- Resources - the cost of creating and running a local multi-agency strategic body and joint initiatives on training, research and innovation in service design
- Staff recruitment
- Model of assessing quality, including how intervention happens if performance falters
- Strategy for information sharing
- Oversight of workforce planning - for example, gaps in skills
- Communications strategy on protecting children
- Risk strategy - identifying and adapting to challenges and events
- Model of local inquiry into serious incidents
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