Working together to Safeguard Children 2023 - Statutory Guidance
Introduction
Every child deserves a secure, steady, and loving home. Achieving this necessitates individuals, agencies, and organisations to clarify their respective roles and responsibilities, and to coordinate their efforts effectively. The guidance defines a child as an individual below the age of 18.
This guidance is relevant to all organisations and agencies who have functions involving children. ‘Working Together’ encompasses individuals at all levels, from senior leaders to frontline practitioners working directly with families, and spans across all agencies and organisations interacting with children. Inspectorate bodies, such as Ofsted, CQC, The Constabulary, and Fire and Rescue, utilise this statutory guidance to shape their inspection frameworks.
The Law
The Children Act 1989 outlines obligations to provide services to children in need and to investigate if there are concerns of significant harm. The Children Act 2004 extends this by requiring local authorities to collaborate with partners to enhance child welfare, with additional duties placed on various organisations and individuals.
Amendments from the Children and Social Work Act 2017 further strengthen this collaboration by assigning new responsibilities to the police, integrated care boards, and local authorities as statutory safeguarding partners.
The government's consultation and response document titled 'Stable homes built on love' outlines a vision and reforms for children's social care, focusing on four key outcomes:
· Outcome 1: children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need
· Outcome 2: children and young people are supported by their family network
· Outcome 3: children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes
· Outcome 4: children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as:
· providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge
· protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online
· preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
· ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
· promoting the upbringing of children with their birth parents, or otherwise their family network through a kinship care arrangement, whenever possible and where this is in the best interests of the children
· taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes in line with the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework.
Chapter 1: A Shared Responsibility
This new chapter emphasises the importance of achieving successful outcomes by adopting a child-centred approach that addresses the needs of the entire family. It underscores the significance of fostering strong partnerships between practitioners and parents or carers, built upon existing effective practices across various sectors.
Children express the need for:
· Vigilance: Adults to notice when they're troubled.
· Understanding and Action: To comprehend what's happening, be listened to and understood, and have actions taken based on their understanding.
· Stability: The opportunity to form stable, trusting relationships with those assisting them.
· Respect: To be treated with the expectation of competence.
· Information and Engagement: To be informed about and involved in procedures, decisions, concerns, and plans.
· Explanation: To understand the outcomes of assessments and decisions, with reasons provided if their views aren't positively received.
· Support: Access to support both individually and as part of their family.
· Advocacy: Assistance in articulating their perspectives.
· Protection: Safeguarding against abuse, exploitation, discrimination, with additional support if they're a refugee.
Principles with working with parents and carers
A new set of principles aims to enhance how practitioners engage with parents and carers:
· Approach: Emphasises empathy, respect, and compassion, avoiding blame and shame. Strengths-based approach considers adversity, trauma, and diverse needs, including those of fathers and parents of disabled children. Adapts responses when abuse or neglect is suspected.
· Communication: Prioritises respectful, jargon-free, and easily understood communication, both verbal and non-verbal.
· Decision Making: Promotes transparency and preparation in decision-making processes, offering support and signposting services.
· Design of Services: Values input from parents and carers, seeks feedback for service improvement, and ensures their expertise is recognized and utilized.
Expectations of Multi-Agency Working
This has been introduced to underpin multi-agency collaboration, the framework emphasises collaboration, learning, resourcing, inclusion, and mutual challenge, applicable to all individuals, agencies, and organisations. It spans from strategic leaders such as Chief Executives of local authorities and NHS trusts, to senior and middle leaders including Directors of Services and Designated Safeguarding Leads, down to direct practitioners. For instance:
· Collaboration involves sharing information among practitioners to ensure a comprehensive understanding of a child's situation and to prioritise the child's needs.
· Learning entails practitioners collectively drawing upon evidence and diverse perspectives to enhance their understanding of child development and outcomes.
· Resourcing involves building strong inter-agency relationships to effectively support and protect children.
· Inclusion means ecognizing and responding confidently to various adversities children face, whether due to economic and social circumstances or parental abuse and neglect.
· Mutual challenge encourages practitioners to question assumptions and engage in constructive dialogue to improve practice.
Chapter 2: Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements
This focuses on enhancing collaboration among safeguarding partners and relevant agencies, strengthening accountability regarding information sharing, independent scrutiny, funding, and reporting.
Safeguarding Partners
The roles and responsibilities of safeguarding partners and their collaborative efforts are clarified, aiming for increased accountability in leadership and service delivery. The Lead Safeguarding Partner (LSP), typically the head of each statutory safeguarding agency, holds their organisation accountable, represents their agency, and ensures compliance with statutory duties. Each LSP appoints a Delegated Safeguarding Partner (DSP) for operational delivery. Within multi-agency arrangements, one DSP serves as the Partnership Chair, facilitating discussions and providing continuity. However, this role does not replace formal complaint procedures or offer independent scrutiny.
Working with schools, colleges, early years, and other education providers & voluntary, charity, social enterprise and sports clubs
The update strengthens the involvement of relevant agencies, acknowledging their crucial role in safeguarding. It emphasises the importance of insight and cooperation among these agencies, suggesting that guidance be read alongside key educational frameworks such as KCSIE, EYFS, and Out of Schools.
Education settings are included at a strategic level, with an education representative serving as a local leader to provide valuable insights. Although not legally required by the 2018 regulations, Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSPs) have the discretion to designate Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations as relevant agencies.
Chapter 3: Providing Help, Support and Protection
Section 1 – Early Help
The emphasis is on family-centred approaches to enhance children's outcomes, elaborating on whole family working concepts. Early help assessments should account for how the needs of different family members intersect, covering areas like education, health, finances, housing, substance use, and crime. Specific considerations include disabilities, language barriers, fathers or male carers, and LGBTQ parents. Services aim to bolster family functioning and problem-solving skills. Risk factors for early help identification are broadened, while education and childcare settings play a strengthened role in safeguarding by facilitating effective information sharing and recognising how children's experiences affect their behaviour, mental health, attendance, and academic progress.
Section 2: Child in Need
The focus is on ensuring children and families receive timely and appropriate support from skilled professionals to achieve the best outcomes. Social care assessments now include consideration of the parenting capacity of all adults in the household and the influence of family networks and wider community environments. Lead practitioners, chosen by local authorities and partners, will conduct assessments and coordinate services, with a broader range of practitioners now eligible for this role. In cases of child protection concerns, a social worker will serve as the lead practitioner.
Support for disabled children and their families
The focus on support for disabled children and their families has shifted towards a holistic approach, aiming to enable families to continue caring for the child while achieving optimal outcomes and providing practical, non-stigmatising assistance. This approach acknowledges the additional pressures and distinct challenges faced by these families due to their child's disability. Furthermore, there's a clear call for a multi-agency safeguarding response to all forms of abuse, neglect, and exploitation, including guidance on supporting children experiencing harm outside the home, emphasising collaboration with families and community partners to understand the broader context of the harm.
Section 3: Child Protection
A new set of national multi-agency practice standards for child protection highlights the essential skills, experience, and expertise required by practitioners in such contexts. These standards apply to all practitioners interacting with children in cases where there are concerns of significant harm.
Additionally, the Children's Social Care National Framework provides statutory guidance on the principles, purpose, factors enabling good practice, and desired outcomes of children's social care, ensuring children's safety both at home and beyond. Lastly, the Kinship Care Strategy aims to facilitate children's placement with familiar caregivers, often family or friends, when removal from parental care is deemed necessary, prioritising their well-being and stability.
Chapter 4: Organisational Responsibilities
The responsibilities outlined in Section 11 of the Children Act extend to various organisations including Local Authorities, NHS, British Transport Police, Probation Services, Prisons, and Youth Offending Teams (YOT). The guidance introduces changes emphasising the benefits of exchanging information between prison and probation services, children's social care, and other agencies. Other statutes, spanning education, early years, homelessness, MAPPA (multi-agency public protection arrangements), voluntary and community sectors, sports, and various organisations, also play significant roles. Clear policies are required to address incidents involving individuals in positions of trust, with a focus on clarifying the threshold for harm.
Chapter 5: Learning from serious Safeguarding Incidents
Learning from Serious Case Reviews (SCRs) is essential for improving organisational practices. Organisations should analyse the insights from case reviews and integrate them into their operations. Local authorities are mandated to notify the Secretary of State for Education and OFSTED about the death of a care leaver up to the age of 24. Additionally, even if a case doesn't meet the criteria for a serious incident, local partners can still conduct a local safeguarding practice review if they believe there is potential learning to be gained from the death of a looked after child or care leaver.
Chapter 6: Child Death Reviews
The aim is to understand the events and their causes, with the objective of preventing future child fatalities. The guidance underscores the importance of striking a balance between forensic and medical necessities while offering support to bereaved families, as many child deaths stem from medical causes.
Next Steps for organisations:
· Download key documents listed below
· Update your safeguarding policy
· Review WTSC Appendix A: Glossary of terms
· Consider the multiagency expectations relevant to your role [p16-18 in guidance] and four principles when working with parents and carers
· Staff training - how will you embed this moving forward?
· Involvement in LSCP arrangements - how does your organisation engage in LSCP arrangements
Appendix A: provides a glossary of terms and their definitions
Appendix B: further sources of information - guidance issued by the Department for Education
Key Documents:
Working Together to Safeguard Children - December 2023: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/657b183d0467eb001355f870/Working_together_to_safeguard_children_2023_-_statutory_guidance.pdf
Keeping Children Safe In Education - September 2023
EYFS Statutory Framework for Schools - January 2024
EYFS Statutory Framework for Childminders - January 2024
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