Transcript Adapting to change: Working Together

Adapting to Change : Working Together
Kevin Garrod, Head of National Partnerships and Outreach
Children England / Safe Network
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Adapting to Change : Working Together
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
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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.
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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• Draft guidance on what is expected of organisations,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• Draft guidance on undertaking assessments of children in need; and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).
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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).
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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
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Trya Henry
Jasmine Beckford
Ricky Neave
Lauren Wright
Victoria Climbie
Anna Kouao
ECM 2003
Children Act 2004
Peter Connelly
Khyra Ishaq
Munro
Review &
Progress
Child
Centred
Early Help
Quality of
practice , its
effectiveness
and risk
Heywood
Outcomes
for children &
young people
Children’s
Centres
Extended
Services
Integrated Youth
Services
CAF
Contact point
ISA/VBS
Local
Safeguarding
Children Boards
Workforce
Development
Localism
Austerity
Troubled Families
Welfare reform
Integrated services
Continuity and Change
The State and the VCS
1.
2.
3.
4.
Poverty, its relief and charity synonymous
VCS expands first as a modern society emerges
Post 1867 Reform the state begins to fill up the gaps
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
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Continuity and Change
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.
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Continuity and Change
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
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Continuity and Change
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
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Continuity and Change
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.’
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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.
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Continuity and Change
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
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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.
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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
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Early help, assessment & case management
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’.
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Early help, assessment & case management
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’.
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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.
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Leadership and learning
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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Defines geographic limits ,encourages collaboration between LSCBs,
Defines independent chair role and requirements
Defines membership and organisational attributes
Identifies additional partners: schools, a GP, a nurse and the VCS
Identifies the role of lay member, their role in linking up with community groups
and the wider public
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Leadership and learning
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;
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Leadership and learning
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
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Leadership and learning
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
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Leadership and learning
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.
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Thank you
To contact us
Web: http://www.safenetwork.org.uk
Twitter: @thesafenetwork
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0116 2347217
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