Agenda item

The purpose of the report is to update the committee on the work of the Medway Safeguarding Children Partnership (MSCP) during 2019-20 and to provide members with an update on the MSCP Strategic Plan and Business Plan 2020-22.

The report has been written in accordance with the joint protocol between strategic partnerships in Medway. The MSCP Annual Report 2019- 20 will follow later in the year.

Discussion:

The Director of People – Children and Adult Services, the current Chair of the Medway Safeguarding Children Partnership (MSCP) introduced the report, highlighting to the Committee the MSCP’s five priority areas. He then Introduced the Independent Scrutineer, who explained his role in relation to the partnership and the work he was doing to build evidence of the partnership’s impact. He also highlighted the importance of each agency’s strategic documents being joined up in approach and how messages should be communicated down the whole safeguarding system.

Members then raised a number of questions and comments which included:

·       Staff development – in response to a question about what staff development activities had taken place as a response to the serious case review relating to Faith, set out at paragraph 3.5 of the report, officers explained that wider development training opportunities had been explored and all agencies were asked to complete a self assessment audit in relation to their readiness to identify risks relating to child abuse.

·       Impact – in response to a question about the impact on the experiences of children and families in Medway, it was explained that more evidence would be available in the MSCP’s annual report, which would be presented to the Committee later in the year.

·       Domestic abuse – officers welcomed the suggestion of an in-depth report in relation to domestic abuse, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the impact this had on vulnerable children and how partner agencies were responding. Comment was also made that when domestic abuse issues were reported, they would not always meet the threshold for social care intervention and officers confirmed they were looking at how they could log such cases.

·       Partner contributions – officers explained that the financial contributions of all the partner agencies listed at paragraph 1.3 of the report, would be included in the annual report. It was confirmed that the local authority contributed the largest amount of funding.

·       Separation of roles – it was queried whether reporting directly from the chair and from the Independent Scrutineer should be kept separate rather than being incorporated in the same report. Officers undertook to explore this with the Partnership's Executive. The Independent Scrutineer confirmed he acted as a constructive critical friend, bringing challenge to the system.

·       Business Plan – Officers undertook to provide the Committee with the MSCP Business Plan Including its RAG ratings every six months.

·       Engagement – The Director of People undertook to include the Medway Parent and Carers Forum in its wider engagement events as a partnership and would ensure that foster carers were also included.

·       Work with schools – In response to a question about the role of schools in relation to safeguarding, officers explained that PCSOs and police officers were working directly with schools and in addition, there had been a recent successful bid for the funding of mental health practitioners who would work directly in schools. Furthermore, communication between schools and Early Help had been improved, particularly as the community was beginning to come out of lockdown and potential safeguarding concerns were being raised by school staff.

·       Missing children – officers explained that there had been much work in relation to missing children, with return home interviews now in place and a suite of leaflets that had been developed for young people at risk of going missing and their parents and carers, which would be available imminently.  The point was made of the importance of regularly tracking missing children and reading across to other risks of vulnerability such as child sexual exploitation and gang activity.

Decision:

The Committee noted the report and requested that an in-depth report regarding domestic abuse be added to the Committee’s work programme.

(Councillors Johnson, Osborne and Chrissy Stamp requested that their votes in favour of the decision be recorded.)