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Local Safeguarding Children's Arrangements

The VKPP are delivering a significant project related to Local Safeguarding Children's Arrangements intended, through stronger cross agency leadership, to deliver local arrangements that ensure children and their families receive targeted services to meet their needs that are coordinated between and across agencies. The work is designed to support Chief Officers, their delegates and senior tactical leaders to;

  • Realise the intentions of the HM Government’s strategy “Stable Homes Built on Love”
  • Meet the enhanced statutory responsibilities set out in the Children and Social Work Act 2017, Working Together 2018,  (to be revised as Working Together 2023 in December 2023) as part of a local multi-agency senior leadership team alongside health and local authority colleagues
  • Deliver responsibilities related to National and Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (which have replaced Serious Case Reviews since 2019)
  • Ensure the work of Local Safeguarding Children’s Arrangements is linked to other strategic partnership work 

The Police, as one of three Local Safeguarding Partners, along with their relevant agencies, are required to work better together to fix persistent, stubborn, repetitive issues in the local children’s safeguarding system. As system leaders, they should demonstrate they are prioritising, coordinating, and making decisions which progress local activities that are;

  • Informed by clear data strategies
  • Using the voice and experiences of children to design and deliver multi-agency activity which benefit children, young people and families.
  • Independently scrutinised

Through VKPP Policing Facilitators for Safeguarding Children Reform, police leaders are being provided with tactical support and advice during the implementation period to March 2025

By systematic gathering of insight from police leaders in local practice, the project has been able to ensure commonly recurring themes are prioritised in the cross-government delivery plan to drive improvements in this area of work.

The project continues to focus on leadership, accountability and independent scrutiny of local arrangements.

Local Child Safeguarding Arrangements Briefing December 2023

Local Safeguarding Children Arrangements - Briefing for Chief Officers Aug 2023

Independent Scrutiny and Local Safeguarding Children Partnership Arrangements

This project was commissioned by the VKPP. Professor Jenny Pearce from the University of Bedfordshire Safer Young Lives Research Centre led the research with Iona Stratton (VKPP) as research assistant. Lorraine Parker (VKPP) was the Principal Investigator.  Alison Thorpe from the Association of Safeguarding Partners (TASP) supported links with Local Safeguarding Children’s Partnerships, business managers, scrutineers and Chairs.

The project provides a descriptive account of Independent Scrutiny in Local Safeguarding Children’s Partnerships (LSCPs) across England. It provides examples of who is scrutinising LSCP activity, giving some descriptions of what is being scrutinised and how.  

The project has entered into a second phase collecting and publishing case examples of Independent Scrutiny due in 2024

 

Independent Scrutiny and Local Safeguarding Children Partnership Arrangements – August 2022