Agenda item

The Committee considered a report from the Head of Children & Young People’s Services regarding the Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH).

The Committee noted that The London Safeguarding Children Board, the Metropolitan Police, London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS) and the Greater London Authority had agreed in 2011 to take forward a London wide project bringing together partner agencies to work more closely together on information sharing. Poor information sharing had been a feature of many inquiries into child death tragedies including Peter Connelly in Haringey.

The London MASH programme had drawn on experience in London and elsewhere. Devon was generally recognised as the first council to have a multi-agency safeguarding hub in place with co-located social workers, police and health professionals. The Devon MASH was established in 2010 and was cited as an example of good practice in the Munro Report on Safeguarding Children.

In London Haringey brought together police with social workers and health professionals to address the poor inter-agency working that was identified by Ofsted and the Peter Connelly serious case review. Hackney had also had a co-located multi-agency arrangement in place for some time.

In Havering, agencies had been working closely together to establish a MASH in Mercury House. Progress had been very good. Although, Havering was not in the original first wave of MASH programmes, the police were now in Mercury House and health partners were recruiting to their post in the multi- agency team.

The Committee was informed that the priority areas that the MASH sought to address were as follows:

• placement moves;
• transfers to social care and the Youth Offending Service;
• service planning not being informed by young people;
• poor use of performance data, and;
• the pace of change being too slow.

The Metropolitan Police and Directors of Children’s Services had signed up to closer working with the Police. Co-locating with cross-agency professionals was seen as a means of helping to streamline services and avoid duplication. Havering was restructuring Children’s Services, with social care and looked after children teams coming under one management and with a shared Youth Offending Service with Barking and Dagenham. The overarching themes of the new approach were: improved participation, performance management and good leadership.

With a view to achieving the overarching themes, the triage/MASH ‘pod’ had been located in a refitted 4^th floor of the North Wing of Mercury House. A police server had been installed along with a new IT system specially designed for MASH. Within MASH, there were three ‘assessment pods’, comprising:

·        four social workers (including three senior practitioners);

·        two advanced practitioners;

·        a practice manager, and;

·        two administrative staff.

There was a single assessment framework that was being used to assist staff in dealing with cases that had increased complexity and to analyse cases in line with the Suffolk judgement.

There had been some improvements of referrals overall as a result of the MASH, although timescales remained a challenge. The next step was to re-launch and extend the hospital social care role in Queens and St Georges and to improve structures by utilising new technologies.

Members asked for more information around the specific time delays in the referral process. Officer explained that MASH was fast during the initial assessment, which was generally handled within 10 days, but core assessments tended to be more challenging. Core assessments took 35 days as these could be delayed owing to various factors. Further, members asked for information relating to the IT procurement timescale. Officers responded that for the CRM, new IT was due by December.

The Committee queried who coordinated the work between MASH and the Police, to which officers responded that the Triage desk had a senior practitioner making decisions on a case by case basis. Each agency coordinated its own activity but Havering social workers would take the overall decision.

The Committee noted the report.