Agenda item

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 working was now being seen at the MASH. It was necessary to understand the threshold of what each agency could do and look at a child’s family as a complete unit, not just one incident. The Local Children’s Safeguarding Board could start making agencies talk to each other and think about services.

Children’s Services were looking to work in a more integrated way with regards to the transition to adulthood for children in care and early intervention for families with emotional and wellbeing issues. The latter service was being piloted in the north of the borough. Updates on this work would be brought to future meetings of the Sub-Committee.

The step down from child protection status was improving although the Board Chairman felt there was a need to ensure early intervention at children in need status as this would ensure only the most serious cases reached child protection level. The right support needed to be available at each stage of the process and assessment of the family was important. The Director of Children’s Services added that most families eventually came out of child protection plans and the Council was moving towards undertaking its own interventions.

The Board Chairman felt that control of the process was achieved via identifying the right provision at a case conference and ensuring that this was delivered. It could however be very difficult to get families to engage at times. Members felt that, whilst it was expected that the Council, Police and health organisations would work together, schools were not so involved. The Director of Children’s Services felt that there were strengths in Havering’s partnership arrangements. There was also a new service leadership team in Children’s Services. Whilst the service was moving in the right direction the work involved would take at least two years to complete.

Members agreed that the quality of the case conference was key and it was important that the right people were at the conferences. Agencies involved were however also under pressure.

Safeguarding work had been very good in the previous year and the Board had held two safeguarding conferences for practitioners. It was noted that the rising population locally meant that an increasing number of more complex children’s cases were being seen in Havering. The Board Chairman agreed that serious case reviews were now very complex and there was often an issue of a family having lived in a number of different boroughs.

The Sub-Committee noted the annual report of the Havering Safeguarding Children Board.