The 3 key safeguarding partners that work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in every local area are:
Local authorities
Local authorities have a number of statutory duties under the Children Act 2004. Under section 10 of the Children Act 2004, a local authority must make arrangements to promote cooperation between the authority and relevant partners to improve the wellbeing of children in the authority’s area.
Local authorities are responsible for:
- Making arrangements to carry out an early help assessment
- Leading multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
- Overseeing allegations against professionals who work with children
- Maintaining a list of appropriate persons to act as independent scrutineers of allegations
- Operating the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB)
- Undertaking section 47 enquiries
- Maintaining a list of appropriate persons to act as independent reviewing officers
- Providing support and supervision to designated leads for safeguarding
- Making arrangements for the strategic management of the LADO service
- Delivering multi-agency safeguarding training
Local authorities should work with partner agencies to put processes in place for understanding their role in identifying and responding to the needs of all children in their area.
Chief officers of police
The chief officer of police is responsible for the policing element of the wider safeguarding partnership. Under the Children Act 2004, police forces have a duty to ensure that their functions are discharged with regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
The police are responsible for:
- The strategic management of their individual and collective resources to ensure the best possible protection for children
- Targeting dangerous individuals and disrupting organised criminal networks to reduce the harm they cause to children and young people
- Contributing to multi-agency child protection policy, procedures, audits and reviews
- Ensuring availability of resources to undertake section 47 enquiries jointly with children’s social care
- Providing staff for child protection conferences
- Carrying out their duties in accordance with guidance
The police should work with the local authority and other agencies to put processes in place for understanding their role in identifying and responding to the needs of all children in their area.
Clinical commissioning groups
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were established under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to commission most NHS services for local populations.
CCGs have a statutory duty to be members of the safeguarding partnership. GP practices, NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts providing commissioned services also have a responsibility to provide appropriate representation.
CCGs are responsible for:
- Ensuring that the health agencies they commission provide a safe system
- Making safeguarding children a key part of contract specifications
- Employing designated doctors and nurses
- Providing clinical input to multi-agency governance systems
CCGs should work with the local authority and other agencies to put processes in place for understanding their role in identifying and responding to the needs of all children in their area.
How the safeguarding partners work together
The 3 safeguarding partners should agree on ways to coordinate their safeguarding services; act as a strategic leadership group in supporting and engaging others; and implement local and national learning including from serious child safeguarding incidents.
To fulfil this role, the safeguarding partners must set out how they will work together and with any relevant agencies as well as arrangements for conducting local reviews.
The purpose of these local arrangements is to support and enable local organisations and agencies to work together in a system where:
- Children are safeguarded and their welfare promoted
- Partner organisations and agencies collaborate, share and co-own the vision for how to achieve improved outcomes for vulnerable children
- Organisations and agencies challenge appropriately and hold one another to account effectively
- There is early identification and analysis of new safeguarding issues and emerging threats
- Learning is promoted and embedded in a way that local services for children and families can become more reflective and implement changes to practice
- Information is shared effectively to facilitate more accurate and timely decision making for children and families
To be effective, each safeguarding partner must:
- Ensure leadership and accountability in their own organisation for safeguarding
- Be assured that the other partners have effective safeguarding arrangements in place
- Provide staff who work with children with an appropriate level of multi-agency safeguarding training
Safeguarding children boards
Every local authority must establish a safeguarding children board (LSCB) for their area and ensure it is run effectively. The safeguarding partners have flexibility to determine whether to maintain the LSCB or move to alternative local arrangements.
Where LSCBs continue to operate, the 3 safeguarding partners must form part of them. LSCBs have an independent scrutiny role in relation to the work of the safeguarding partners.
Where local arrangements are put in place, they must include independent scrutiny of the effectiveness of the arrangements.
Information sharing
Sharing information is vital in identifying and tackling all forms of abuse and neglect, and in promoting children’s welfare, including their educational outcomes. Fears about sharing information must not be allowed to stand in the way of the need to safeguard and promote the welfare and protect the safety of children.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 do not prevent information about children being shared with specific authorities if it is for the purposes of safeguarding children and individuals at risk.
Information can be shared legally without consent if a practitioner is unable to or cannot be reasonably expected to gain consent from the individual, or if to gain consent could place a child at risk.
Relevant agencies
Relevant agencies are organisations and agencies whose involvement the safeguarding partners consider may be required to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. The safeguarding partners must set out in their published arrangements which organisations and agencies they will be working with and set out details of any safeguarding groups that will support the partnership arrangements.
Relevant agencies can bring issues to and request a review by the safeguarding partners regarding the effectiveness of local arrangements. Safeguarding partners should set out in their published arrangements when this may be required and how it will be handled.
Schools, colleges and other educational providers
All schools, colleges and other educational providers have duties in relation to safeguarding children and promoting their welfare. This includes:
- Maintaining a culture of safeguarding
- Having safeguarding policies and procedures in place
- Appointing a designated safeguarding lead
- Ensuring staff undergo safeguarding training
- Teaching children about safeguarding
The designated safeguarding lead should work closely with the 3 safeguarding partners. All schools, colleges and other educational providers should work with social care, the police, health services and other services to promote the welfare of children and protect them from harm.
Early years providers
Early years providers must meet the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the early years foundation stage (EYFS), including requirements relating to child protection arrangements. Providers must have regard for the government’s statutory guidance ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’.
Ofsted inspects early years providers against requirements relating to safeguarding children and learners. Inspectors will always report on whether arrangements for safeguarding children and learners are effective.
Voluntary, charity and social enterprise organisations
Voluntary, charity, social enterprise (VCSE) and private sector organisations and agencies play an important role in safeguarding children through the services they deliver.
Some of these will work with particular communities, with different races and faith communities and delivering in health, adult social care, housing, prisons and probation services. They may as part of their work provide a wide range of activities for children and have an important role in safeguarding children and supporting families and communities.
Like other organisations and agencies who work with children, they should have appropriate arrangements in place to safeguard and protect children from harm. Many of these organisations and agencies as well as many schools, children’s centres, early years and childcare organisations, will be subject to charity law and regulated either by the Charity Commission or other ‘principal’ regulators. Charity trustees are responsible for ensuring that those benefiting from, or working with, their charity, are not harmed in any way through contact with it.
Children’s social care services
The lead person with overall responsibility for the management of allegations against staff who work with children should sit within the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) service.
The LADO must ensure all allegations are handled appropriately and promoted to a position of independence by not carrying caseloads.
Other responsibilities include:
- Managing and oversight of individual complex cases
- Monitoring the progress of cases to ensure they are dealt with timely and consistent with a thorough and fair process
- Providing advice, information and guidance to employers and voluntary organisations around allegations and concerns regarding paid and unpaid staff
- Maintaining detailed records of all allegations and concerns, actions taken and outcomes
- Chairing strategy meetings
- Managing and monitoring a system to identify patterns, themes and trends in allegations and concerns across the local area
Adult social care services
Local authorities provide services to adults who are themselves responsible for children who may be in need. These services are subject to inspection by Ofsted in relation to how they meet the needs of children under section 10 of the Children Act 2004.
When organising and delivering services, adult social care services should reflect the importance of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.
Public Health England
Public Health England (PHE) champions healthy behaviours in the population including stopping smoking in pregnancy, reducing teenage pregnancy and parenting support. PHE’s responsibilities include:
- Providing public health input to NHS commissioners
- Building relationships with clinical commissioning groups
- Lead role in behaviour change for health
- Health improvement interventions and campaigns
PHE should work with the safeguarding partners to ensure a strong focus on safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.
Housing authorities
Housing and homelessness services’ practitioners have a key role to play in safeguarding vulnerable children and adults. Children and their families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless are more likely to require coordinated early help and child protection services. Housing authorities should work closely with the 3 safeguarding partners to ensure a joined-up approach.
The British Transport Police
The British Transport Police (BTP) is a national police force for the railways providing policing services to rail operators, their staff and passengers throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Within its geographical jurisdiction, the BTP is a statutory organisation responsible for recording and investigating offences committed. The BTP should work with the local safeguarding partners as required.
Prison Service
The Prison Service discharges its responsibility to safeguard children through a child safeguarding policy and practice safeguards embedded in all areas of its operational practice. Each prison’s obligation to plan for and protect the welfare of children exceeds custodial settings and requires active partnership with the local safeguarding partners.
Probation Service
The Probation Service is responsible for supervising adults who have received community orders and custodial sentences. It has a responsibility to consider the safeguarding of children when dealing with perpetrators of domestic abuse and for contributing to MAPPA arrangements.
The Probation Service should follow National Probation Service (NPS) guidance on safeguarding children procedures. All staff must work to support safeguarding partnerships’ priorities and plans. Maintaining evidence-based practice in this area contributes significantly to the NPS’ public protection priorities.
Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass)
Cafcass represents children’s interests in family court cases. Cafcass practitioners within the safeguarding children teams provide social work advice to family courts when parental separation is entrenched and children’s care arrangements are contested.
Cafcass has a strong organisational commitment to safeguarding children which features prominently in its strategic plan. At an operational level this commitment is delivered through:
- Ensuring arrangements to provide an appropriate level of safeguarding supervision for practitioners
- Operating robust safe recruitment practices and induction training
- Implementing procedures for dealing with allegations against staff
- Developing principal social work practitioner roles to provide practice expertise
- Appointing a lead board member for safeguarding
Armed Services
Local authorities have the statutory responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the children of service families in their area. In discharging these responsibilities:
- Armed services need to work with local authorities, statutory and voluntary organisations to ensure service children and families receive appropriate help
- Each local authority with a defence establishment in its area should establish liaison arrangements with local military authorities
- Arrangements should be put in place to cooperate closely with service welfare organisations, such as SSAFA, on behalf of armed service families
Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements
Many of the agencies subject to the section 11 duty are members of the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), including the police, prison and probation services. MAPPA should work together with duty to cooperate agencies to target sexual and violent offenders in order to reduce offending and improve safeguarding.
Conclusion
The 3 safeguarding partners – local authorities, chief officers of police, and clinical commissioning groups – have a shared and equal duty to make arrangements to work together with relevant agencies to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their local area. However, safeguarding children and protecting them from harm is everyone’s responsibility. Everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play.
To effectively safeguard children and maximise the life chances for children who are vulnerable or in need, the safeguarding partners and all relevant agencies must work together to put in place robust arrangements that promote shared ownership and responsibility.
