Issue - meetings

The Board Chairman explained that there had been a lot of changes in 2016 including the face to face programme initiated by the Director of Children’s Services.

A restructure of the Metropolitan Police had sought to address inspection findings that the Force was failing in its safeguarding responsibilities, particularly of children. Police management was now different and the local Havering Police now worked closely with local social care agencies. Children’s Police teams had been previously run from the centre but these were now overseen by the local Commander. Safeguarding teams were also now part of a local command process. Twelve extra officers were now available across the three local boroughs to deal with missing children and child sexual exploitation cases which it was felt allowed more flexibility.

The transition from children’s to adult services had been highlighted as a problem in a recent serious case review and officers were currently looking at this. There was however an excellent relationship in Havering between children’s and adult services.

Havering had received £2.4 million from the Department for Education innovations fund and officers would bring the programme of work related to this funding to a future meeting of the Sub-Committee. The Board Chairman felt that it was necessary change approach from dealing with specific incidents to dealing with families and their complexities which would for example reduce the numbers of children going into custody etc.

The Local Safeguarding Children’s Board had been inspected as part the recent OFSTED inspection and recommendations made covered areas including the correct operation of thresholds, ensuring accurate data went to the Board and strengthening oversight of private fostering arrangements, which was already under way in Havering.

The Board Chairman reported that the BHRUT Hospitals’ Trust had improved its safeguarding work and now had a much bigger team for this area. It was however still difficult at times to access all GPs via the Clinical Commissioning Group. The Probation Service had good representation on the Safeguarding Board.

OFSTED had found there was good multi-agency working in Havering and this needed to continue. There were however risks posed by the impact of austerity measures and of the rising birth rate. The Board Chairman thanked the Council and in particular Councillors Benham and Davis for their support of the Board.

The Council’s Children’s Services team had produced guidance on the use of thresholds but other agencies had to understand their responsibilities re safeguarding and that thresholds started from the early intervention stage. The Face to Face programme would allow use of an escalation policy. Escalation documents could also be used to reinforce threshold levels with new staff. The Director of Children’s Services added that a professional judgement was made re the needs of a family. In his view, other agencies did have an understanding and awareness of thresholds. Previous problems with this had been due to a high turnover of staff.

MASH provision had been strengthened and an away day for all MASH partners had recently been held and better partnership  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26