WANDSWORTH SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN BOARD
REPORT COVERING SEPTEMBER 2010 TO MARCH 2012 AND SAFEGUARDING PRIORITIES
2012-13
C O N T E N T S
PageForeword by Independent Chair / 4
Governance and Accountability of Wandsworth Safeguarding Children Board (WSCB) / 5
- Structure
- Role and Function
- Relationships with Children and Young People’s Partnership Board (CYPPB)
Work of Sub-Committees / 7
- Child Death Overview Panel
- Serious Case Review Sub-Committee
- Monitoring Sub-Committee
· Management of allegations against adults in a position of trust
· Reporting allegations against adults in a position of trust
· Multi-Agency Case File Audit Group
Progress on Priorities up to March 2012 / 11
Other key safeguarding issues monitored by the WSCB during 2011-12 / 26
Key Child Protection Performance Management Information up to March 2012 / 29
Financial Report / 29
Challenge and Safeguarding Priorities for 2012-13 for the CYPBB / 30
Safeguarding Priorities and Work Plan for the WSCB 2012-13 / 31
Appendix 1 – Performance Information up to March 2012 / 34
Appendix 2 - WSCB Dataset / 41
Appendix 3 - Management of Allegations against adults in a position of trust / 50
Appendix 4 – Income and Expenditure 2011-12 and
- Income and Projected Expenditure 2012-13 / 59
Appendix 5 – WSCB Work Plan 2012-13 / 63
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GLOSSARY
BAME / Black and Asian Minority EthnicCAF / Common Assessment Framework
CAPT / Child Accident Prevention Trust
CHIS / Challenging Homophobia in Schools
CDOP / Child Death Overview Panel
CLA / Children Looked After
CPC / Child Protection Co-ordinator
CYPPB / Children and Young People’s Partnership Board
CYPP / Children and Young People’s Plan
DAAAT / Drugs and Alcohol Action Team
ESLO / e-Safety Lead Officer
FGM / Female Genital Mutilation
HWBB / Health and Wellbeing Board
LA / Local Authority
LADO / Local Authority Designated Officer
LSCB / Local Safeguarding Children Board
MARAC / Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference
MASH / Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub
MHT / Mental Health Trust
SAPB / Safeguarding Adults Partnership Board
SCIE / Social Care Institute of Excellence
SCR / Serious Case Review
SEMAP / Sexual Exploitation Multi-Agency Panels
SPOC / Single Point of Contact
SPSS / Stay Put Stay Safe
SSS / Safeguarding Standards Service
TAC / Team Around the Child
TFL / Transport for London
TYST / Targeted Youth Support Team
VCS / Voluntary and Community Sector
WSCB / Wandsworth Safeguarding Children Board
YOT / Youth Offending Team
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FOREWORD BY THE INDEPENDENT CHAIR
Welcome to the second Annual Report of the Wandsworth Safeguarding Children Board.
This will be the first annual report that I have been involved in preparing in Wandsworth. I was appointed as the Independent chair of the WSCB last summer and took up post in July 2011. It has been an exciting and challenging year for the Board and the agencies that form it. The OFSTED inspection which took place in May 2012 confirmed all the good work undertaken by agencies in safeguarding children and the strong partnership arrangements. It also validated the areas for development that the WSCB had identified.
A review of the structure, governance and working of the WSCB has been undertaken to ensure that the WSCB is fit for purpose to deliver on the recommendations of the Munro Review and we will be implementing a number of these recommendations in the coming year.
This report covers the progress the Board has made against the 19 priorities it set in 2010-11 which rolled over to 2011-12. For 2012-13 the WSCB has focused on a smaller number of broader priorities which have emerged either as learning from serious cases or from the review of practice in relation to the 19 previous priorities. The Board will continue to hold partner agencies either individually or collectively to account through the CYPPB, and in other ways, for the delivery of the new priority areas and will monitor the extent to which they contribute to better outcomes for children and young people in Wandsworth.
In May 2011, the final report from the Munro Review of Child Protection, a child-centred system, was published. Within this report, Professor Munro set out how Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB) are key to improving multi-agency working by supporting and enabling partner organisations to adapt their practice, become more effective in safeguarding children and develop reflective learning systems in their organisations.
There are further challenges for the WSCB in the next year in implementing the Government’s new slimmed down version of “Working Together to Safeguard Children" and related Guidance which is currently out for consultation. The WSCB will need to make clear how the new flexibilities implicit in the less prescriptive nature of Government Guidance should best be used. I would like to thank members of the WSCB and the WSCB Support Team for helping the Board to make Professor Munro’s aspirations much more of a reality for Wandsworth for the benefit of children and young people, and their families. I look forward to another equally challenging year in promoting safeguarding children in Wandsworth.
Nicky Pace
Independent Chair of the Wandsworth Safeguarding Children Board
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GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF WSCB
1. The Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) in Wandsworth is the statutory process for agreeing how the relevant organisations will co-operate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in Wandsworth.
2. In Professor Eileen Munro’s report to the government [1] she confirms that LSCBs will, in accountability terms, continue to scrutinise the work of local partners in ensuring that services safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. “LSCBs play an extremely valuable role and will remain uniquely positioned within the local accountability architecture to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. They are also well placed to identify emerging problems through learning from practice and to oversee efforts to improve services in response.”
3. The work of the WSCB and its three Sub-Committees contribute to and continue to promote good practice, identifying areas for improvements and development, and enables agencies within Wandsworth to come together to consider safeguarding issues.
STRUCTURE
4. The WSCB has a three-tier structure, giving strategic overview and direction of the work undertaken by the Board, to the operational Sub-Committees that co-ordinate and carry out the work agreed by the WSCB within its Work Plan. The WSCB has been chaired independently since July 2011.
5. First the WSCB has an Executive Board, consisting of senior to director level representatives from all the key statutory agencies in Wandsworth. Second, below the Executive Board is the Main Board, which has a mix of strategic and operational managers from statutory and non-statutory agencies within the borough, including representatives from the Third Sector. Thirdly, there are three (increasing to four in September 2012) important Sub-Committees that are responsible for specific work streams.
6. The WSCB is currently undertaking a review of the governance and accountability arrangements, including the structure and, subsequently the Terms of Reference in light of Munro Review and the revision of “Working Together (2010)”, to ensure that they are in line with and reflective of new guidance issued for consultation on 12 June 2012. These include:-
• “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 Cases: The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families” draft guidance on undertaking assessments of children in need.
• “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).
ROLE AND FUNCTION OF WSCB
7. The WSCB has three broad areas of activity for which it is responsible:
- that which affects all children and aims to identify and prevent maltreatment, or impairment of health or development, and ensure children are growing up in circumstances consistent with safe and effective care (universal);
- proactive work that aims to target particular groups (targeted); and
- responsive work to protect children who are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm (specialist).
8. The key functions prescribed in Regulations include:
- developing policies and procedures for:
· training of persons working with children;
· recruitment and supervision of persons working with children;
· safety and welfare of privately fostered children;
· investigation of allegations against those working with children; and
· action to be taken when there are concerns about a child’s safety or welfare, including the thresholds of intervention.
- communicating and raising awareness within the wider community, including faith and minority communities, about how everybody can contribute to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children;
- producing and publishing an annual report on the effectiveness of safeguarding in the local area;
- monitoring the effectiveness of the local authority and partner agencies, and ensuring they are fulfilling their statutory duties under the safeguarding requirements (Section 11) of the Children Act (2004);
- participating in the local planning and commissioning of children’s services, ensuring that safeguarding is fully taken into account;
- conducting ‘Serious Case Reviews’ where a child has died or suffered serious harm and where neglect or abuse is known or suspected to be a factor; and
- collecting and analysing information about the deaths of all children in the local area; and to develop procedures for ensuring there is a coordinated response to the unexpected death of a child.
9. The WSCB has clearly defined Terms of Reference, which outlines the scope of the WSCB, its core functions, structures, accountability, chairing and membership arrangements; and the financial and staffing arrangements. As previously stated these are currently under review.
10. During the coming year the WSCB and the newly established Health and Wellbeing Board (HWBB) will need to clarify their respective relationships, but the working hypothesis is that the WSCB will hold the HWBB (as one of the premier Partnership Boards serving the borough) to account for safeguarding priority areas relating to the health of children and young people even though it will be the CYPPB that will be principally responsible for ensuring that they are delivered.
RELATIONSHIP WITH CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE’S PARTNERSHIP BOARD (CYPPB)
11. The WSCB has a separate identity to and an independent voice from the CYPPB and is not subordinate or subsumed within the CYPPB. The WSCB’s role is to ensure the effectiveness of arrangements made by the CYPPB and individual agencies to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. Whilst the work of the WSCB contributes to the wider goals of improving the wellbeing of children and young people, its specific focus is on safeguarding and protecting children and young people.
12. The CYPPB is responsible for producing a Children and Young People’s Plan (CYPP) which is a partnership strategy with agreed common aims and priorities on how all partner agencies, individually and collectively, will cooperate to improve children and young people’s wellbeing, including safeguarding.
13. The WSCB holds the CYPPB to account and scrutinises the CYPPB’s delivery of safeguarding services and meeting of the priority areas set for it by the WSCB. This is achieved through the presentation by the Chairs of the relevant Overview Groups from the CYPPB that reports to the WSCB’s Monitoring Sub-Committee in relation to the delivery of the safeguarding agenda. This enables the WSCB to analyse and assess the effectiveness of the CYPPB’s safeguarding activities.
14. The WSCB produces an annual report on the strengths and areas for development in the delivery of safeguarding services across the multi-agency partnership. This will enable the CYPPB to respond to those areas raised in the Annual Report through the CYPP.
15. Both the Lead and Chief Executive of the Council are responsible for assessing annually the effectiveness of local governance and partners’ implementation arrangements for improving safeguarding standards.
WORK OF SUB-COMMITTEES
The Child Death Overview Panel
16. The Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP), on behalf of the WSCB, is responsible for reviewing all child deaths (up to the age of 18, but excluding still births) of Wandsworth residents. This would include:
- collecting and analysing information about the deaths of all children and young people normally resident in Wandsworth, with a view to:
· identifying any matters of concerns including any case giving rise to the need for a Serious Case Review; and
· identifying any general public health or safety concern arising from the deaths of children or young people.
17. There were a total of 62 deaths reported to the Wandsworth Single Point of Contact (SPOC) from 1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012. 26 (42%) of these deaths were Wandsworth resident children and are to be reviewed by the Wandsworth Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP), the remaining 36 were children resident in other areas and these were passed onto the relevant Local Authority SPOC. There are a high number of child deaths from neighbouring boroughs due to St George’s Hospital’s role as a large tertiary referral hospital.
18. The CDOP met during the 2011-12 period six times. Of the 26 cases to be reviewed by the Wandsworth CDOP, ten were unexpected and sixteen expected. In 2010-11 there were 27 child deaths in Wandsworth, seventeen expected and ten unexpected. In 2009-10 there were thirteen child deaths in Wandsworth, seven expected and six unexpected.
19. In 2011-12 five multi-agency response meetings were held in response to the ten unexpected deaths in 2011-12. It was agreed that multi-agency response meetings were not required for the other five unexpected deaths because two were extremely premature neonates who suffered rapid deterioration and three were children with known life limiting conditions.
20. The majority of Wandsworth resident child deaths reported to the SPOC between 1st April 2011 and 31st March 2012 were that of children under the age of one year. Twelve out of these 20 children died within the first 28 days of life. This age group continues to be the highest each year due to premature births.
21. The year 2010-11 remains the data year with the highest number of deaths (27) since the Wandsworth Child Death Overview Panel came into operation. Following a comparative exercise undertaken of child death numbers for the years prior to the CDOP process (April 2008) and the figures held by the Office of National Statistics, it showed an average of 25 child deaths per year for the London Borough of Wandsworth. This continues to be the trend with the exception of 2009-10 when there were only thirteen child deaths.