Adapting to Change : Working Together

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• 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 afternoons objectives
• To help colleagues understand change including
  Munro and Working Together
• To help delegates to engage with the formal
  consultation on Working Together
• To introduce delegates to the new arrangements
  for Disclosure and Barring
• To provide colleagues with the opportunity to
  participate in the associated consultation
  defining proportionate supervision for
  unregulated activity

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(No Transcript)
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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
  Childrens 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• Draft guidance on what is expected of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• Draft guidance on undertaking assessments of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
Childrens Centres Extended Services Integrated
Youth Services CAF Contact point ISA/VBS
Local Safeguarding Children Boards Workforce Deve
lopment
Munro Review Progress Child Centred Early
Help Quality of practice , its effectiveness and
risk Heywood
Localism Austerity Troubled Families
Welfare reform Integrated services
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Continuity and Change

• The State and the VCS
• 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
• Big central, small local, the state waxes and
  wanes
• A (or the) Perfect Storm
• Sectors 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)
• Failureoften 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 sectors
  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 organisations
  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
TogetherLegislative 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 childrens
  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
• have at their centre the importance of assessing
  children and families in a way that is timely and
  proportionate to their needs and
• 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
• 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?
• 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?
• 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 LSCBs 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.
• 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.
• 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
• Communicate the need to safeguard and promote the
  welfare of children and participate in local
  planning
• 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
• 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 Childrens 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 LSCBs and Serious Case
  Reviews
• Does the guidance set out a clear, strong role
  for LSCBs to monitor, challenge and hold agencies
  to account?
• 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.
• Will the new arrangements for Serious Case
  Reviews lead to better learning which helps to
  prevent future harm to children?
• 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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