Agenda item

Children's Safeguarding

Minutes:

Dr Henri Giller, Chair of the Oldham Local Safeguarding Children’s Board attended the meeting to introduce a report presenting proposed new arrangements for Oldham’s children’s safeguarding and seeking the endorsement of the Board to those proposals.  The Children and Social Work Act 2017 required the local authority, police and local clinical commissioning group as the three statutory partners under the legislation to publish revised multi-agency safeguarding arrangements by 29th June 2019 and implement these new arrangements by 29th September 2019. The requirements of the Act meant also that the current Local Safeguarding Children’s Board and current structures would be disbanded.

 

The proposed arrangements comprised a Safeguarding Children Strategic Partnership to provide strategic vision, leadership, scrutiny and accountability; a Children’s Safeguarding Executive Group to support the Partnership and be responsible for delivery of the Partnership’s strategic business plan; and sub-groups of the Executive to undertake detailed work on implementation of the business plan with respect to services, service developments, performance monitoring and quality assurance. A stronger role for the voice and vision of the child is also proposed in service planning and scrutiny.  Responding to a query as to the potential complexity of arrangements, Dr Giller noted that safeguarding is a complex area with many issues and organisations needing to input. 

 

It was intended that the new arrangements would provide for challenge, scrutiny and commitment to continuous improvement amongst the statutory partners and relevant agencies, ensuring that all relevant local agencies continued to engage with the statutory partners in effective safeguarding activities while building stronger linkages with the Oldham Adult Safeguarding Board and allied partnerships and governance groups.

 

A number of options and alternatives had been considered by the statutory partners. Retention of current arrangements was not available due to the statutory imperative.  In determining a local option, emergent options at both Greater Manchester and national levels had been considered, including an option to bring together children and adults safeguarding governance arrangements.  The preferred option, presented in detail within an appendix to the submitted report, focussed on the strategic role of the statutory partners and relevant agencies for leadership and accountability; delegated operational oversight and performance management to an executive group; enabled functional priority sub-groups to address the detail of issues; and facilitated both safeguarding working between children and adults services in a consistent and coherent fashion and the continuous improvement in safeguarding practice, along with the contribution of children and young people to this.

 

Responding to a query about the role of children in the process, Dr Giller advised that there were current contacts and arrangements through, for example, the Youth Forum and the Children in Care group, and it was intended to widen this approach to increase inclusiveness. 

 

The Chair noted that previous scrutiny of safeguarding arrangements had comprised only of receipt of annual reports, suggesting that a more stringent approach might be required in respect of the new arrangements.  Dr Giller concurred, particularly over the initial 12 months of operation.  Reference was made to two Greater Manchester authorities that had been early adopters of new arrangements and key messages were emerging from the differing models adopted.  It was key that the gains made since the 2015 OFSTED inspection were not lost and that closer working with adult safeguarding arrangements were developed.  With regard to finance, the Board was advised that an ‘as is’ budget assumption had been made for the first six months and should a significant increase in costs be identified this position could be reviewed.

 

The Chair proposed a six month report to the Board in March 2020.  Dr Giller further advised on implementation workshops and events occurring between July and September to present and clarify new arrangements to stakeholders that Members of the Board might be interested in attending.  With regard to any training or development activity for elected Members on the new arrangements, Dr Giller suggested that this might be appropriate in around three months as the detail of expectations of the new arrangements was developed.

 

RESOLVED that (1) the proposed revised arrangements for children’s safeguarding be endorsed and recommended to the Cabinet for adoption;

            (2) an update report on implementation of the new arrangements be submitted to the Board in March 2020.

 

Supporting documents: