2.1 Local Safeguarding Children Board - Role and Function

Contents

1. Role and Functions
2. Scope of the Role
3. Accountability
4. Integration with Other Forums
5. Membership
6. Structure
7. Annual Business Plan
8. LSCB Annual Report

1. Role and Function

The overall role of the LSCB is to coordinate local work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and to ensure the effectiveness of what the member organisations do individually and together.

Specific objectives of the LSCB are to:

• Develop and agree inter-agency policies and procedures for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, consistent with Working Together to Safeguard Children, including:
  1. The action to be taken where there are concerns about a child’s safety or welfare, including thresholds for intervention
  2. Training of those working with children or in services affecting the safety and welfare of children
  3. Recruitment and supervision of persons who work with children
  4. Investigation of allegations concerning persons working with children
  5. The safety and welfare of privately fostered children
  6. Cooperation with neighbouring children’s social care services authorities and their Board partners
• Participate in the planning of services for children in the local authority area
• Communicate the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child
• Develop procedures to ensure a coordinated response to unexpected child deaths
• Monitor the effectiveness of what is done to safeguard and promote the welfare of children
• Undertake appropriate Serious Case Reviews and ensure lessons are understood and acted upon
• Collect and analyse information about child deaths

As part of the Monitoring and Evaluation Function of the LSCB, there is a requirement for the LSCB to ensure appropriate links exist with any secure settings in its area and to be able to scrutinise the use of restraint, and incidences and injuries.

2. Scope of the Role

Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010) states that the LSCB’s role includes the safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in three broad areas of activity:

Firstly, activity that affects all children and aims to identify and prevent maltreatment or impairment of health and development, and ensure that children grow up in circumstances consistent with safe and effective care.

Secondly, pro-active work that aims to target particular groups, including developing thresholds for working with children and families where the child comes within the definition of Children in Need but is not suffering or likely to suffer Significant Harm and work to safeguard and promote the welfare of groups of children potentially more vulnerable than the general population, for example because they may be disabled or living away from home or in custody

Thirdly, responsive work to protect children who are suffering or likely to suffer Significant Harm, including children

• Abused and neglected within families including those affected as a result of domestic violence or parental substance misuse or parental mental ill health
• Abused outside of the family by adults known to them or by strangers
• Abused or neglected by professional carers whilst in an institution or anywhere else where children are cared for away from home
• Abused by other children
• Abused through sexual exploitation
• Who perpetrate abuse
• Who are young victims of crime

Where particular children are the subject of intervention, then that safeguarding work should aim to help them to achieve all five Every Child Matters outcomes to have optimum life chances. It is within the remit of the LSCB to check the extent to which this has been achieved as part of their monitoring and evaluation work.

3. Accountability

Whilst the LSCB has a role in coordinating and ensuring the effectiveness of local individuals’ and organisations’ work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, it is not accountable for their operational work.

Each Board partner retains its own existing lines of accountability for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children by their services.

The LSCB does not have the power to direct other organisations.

4. Integration with Other Forums

It is important that safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is seen as part of the wider context of the Children’s Strategic Partnership and that the LSCB’s policies, guidance and procedures such as these, reflect and contribute to the wider goals of improving the wellbeing of all children. The LSCB complements the role of the Children’s Trust Board and the LSCB should be represented on the Children’s Trust Board although the two bodies should be chaired by different people.

The Children’s Trust Board – drawing on support and challenge from the LSCB - will ensure that the Children and Young People’s Plan reflects the strengths and weaknesses of safeguarding arrangements and practices in the area and what more needs to be done by each partner to improve safeguarding and promotion of welfare. The LSCB is a formal consultee during the development of the Children and Young Peoples Plan (see also Section 8, LSCB Annual Report).

5. Membership

The LSCB is made of organisations which will designate particular, named people as their LSCB member so that there is a consistency and continuity in membership.

Members will be those with a strategic role in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children within their organisation. They should be able to:

• Speak for their organisation with authority
• Commit their organisation on policy and practice matters
• Hold their organisation to account

Members of the LSCB must include:

• Children’s Social Care Services
• Adults’ Social Care Services
• Strategic Health Authority and Primary Care Trusts
• NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation trusts
• Police
• Probation
• Youth Offending Team
• Connexions
• CAFCASS
• Any Secure Training Centre
• Any prison which ordinarily detains children
• Two representatives of the local community. (Their role is described in 3.75 of WT 2010)
• Representation from schools, which means taking steps to ensure that the following are represented: the governing body of a maintained school; the proprietor of a non-maintained special school; the proprietor of a city technology college, a city college for the technology of the arts or an Academy; and the governing body of a further education institution the main site of which is situated in the authority’s area. Independent schools should also be included as appropriate (paragraph 3.78 of WT 2010)

Other members may include:

• NSPCC
• Faith groups
• State and Independent Schools
• Further Education Colleges
• Children’s Centres
• GP’s
• Independent Health care organisations
• Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations
• Armed Forces
• Immigration Service

There is a presumption that the LSCB Chair will be independent of local agencies.

In addition, the LSCB will make strategic links with other organisations and individuals, for example Substance Misuse Services, the local MAPPA, dental health services, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Coroner, either through inviting them to join the Board or through some other mechanism.

The LSCB also need to draw on the work key national organisations and liaise with them where necessary, for example the Child Exploitation and On-Line Protection Centre.

6. Structure

To assist the LSCB with its objectives, each LSCB has a supporting structure. Terms of Reference for each of the Boards sub-groups are available through the LSCB websites.

7. Annual Business Plan

The LSCB produces an annual business plan setting out:

• A work programme for the following year to include measurable objectives
• Relevant management information of child protection activity in the previous year
• Progress against objectives established for the year ending

8. LSCB Annual Report

There is a requirement (under the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009) for the LSCB to produce and publish an annual report on the effectiveness of safeguarding in the local area, including the implementation of Serious Case Review action plans; and to send a copy to the Children’s Trust Board in time to influence and contribute to the Children and Young Person’s Plan.

End