Agenda item

Sir Paul Ennals, the Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Children’s Board, presented a report to the Board that was included in the agenda pack at pages 107 -155. The report was for information purposes and provided an overview of Haringey LSCB’s activities and achievements during 2014-2015; it summarised the effectiveness of safeguarding activity in Haringey and provided an overview of how well children in Haringey were protected.

The Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Children’s Board drew the Committee’s attention to the Chair’s Foreword, especially the last paragraph; Section 6 on Board effectiveness, and the summary in Section 8. The Board noted that safeguarding arrangements within Haringey were broadly robust and effective and that the partnership had demonstrated its willingness to confront and respond to issues that arose. In terms of areas for improvement, the partnership needed to; improve its data sharing, improve its engagement of children and young people in the work it undertook and to think radically about how services would be delivered in the years ahead.

The Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Children’s Board highlighted considerations for the Board to note in relation to the report:

• The Board considered itself to be broadly effective, providing challenge and scrutiny across partners and actively encouraging partnership working.
• Services in Haringey were at least as good as in most areas.
• Schools in Haringey were better than most and the Board noted that this was a significant indicator as good schools tended to keep children safe.
• The last year saw a significant increase in the number of referrals to Children’s Social Care, increases in the number of Children in Need, and increases in the number of children on Child Protection Plans.
• Significant improvements have been made in the way the Board tackled some of the biggest risks such as CSE and missing children.
• The Board were monitoring the introduction of Early Help services, which would be crucial in reducing the impact of a reduction in resources in years to come.
• The partnership was showing that it was ready to be open, frank and honest with each other; acknowledging when cuts were coming in and the impact this would have on children and families but try to mitigate the impact as much as it could in a multi-agency way. 

Sharon Grant, the Chair of Healthwatch Haringey, asked for clarification on the reasons behind worsening performance around home visits to children subject to child protection plans within four weeks.  The Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Children’s Board responded that the figures noted in the report reflected performance for the last 12 months to April and that more recent performance was more encouraging. The AD Safeguarding and Social Care added that one of the main reasons was difficulty in recruiting permanent staff, which led to a relatively high level of turnover of agency staff. The AD Safeguarding and Social Care advised that the performance reflected a shortfall in home visits being done within the four week timescale not that those visits were not happening at all.

Ms. Grant requested that future performance data be presented in a way that qualified how late visits were. The Chair advised that the Corporate Delivery Unit assessed performance in detail, beyond the headline performance figures, and that in-depth analysis of key safeguarding performance was undertaken on a periodic basis. The Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Children’s Board commented that a lot of the detailed data was monitored by the key agencies as it came through and that they would ensure that proper scrutiny and monitoring of fluctuations of key performance was undertaken. The Board’s role was more around maintaining an overview.

Dr Adi Cooper, Independent Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) presented a report to the Board that was included in the agenda pack at pages 157-232. The Board noted that the report was significant as it reflected the preparations being done to ensure compliance with the Care Act 2014.

Dr Cooper advised that she had taken on the role of Independent Chair during the summer and that having an Independent Chair was helpful in terms of taking the Board on to the next level. The SAB was noted as being in a different place to the Children’s Board in terms of the partnership and in terms of meeting the shift in emphasis required to meet the provisions of the Care Act. The Director of Adult Social Services agreed that the appointment of an independent Chair would bring an element of robustness and challenge to the multi-agency partnership.

Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy highlighted the synergies between both sets of safeguarding reports and the violence against women and girls agenda and that the Council and partners were in the early stages of developing a new violence against women and girls agenda and would be linking in with both safeguarding boards during this process.

Zina Etheridge, the Deputy Chief Executive, asked for elaboration on the quality of provision of safeguarding processes and the quality of schools. Officers responded that quality had a direct relationship to prevention of safeguarding incidents occurring and that the Care Act placed a duty on the partnership to develop a multi-agency response to quality assurance. Officers added that up until relatively recently the Council had been fairly internally focused in terms of quality assurance but that a number of measures were being developed to broaden that relationship.

Dr. Adi Cooper advised that there were a number of issues around service provision across London, about the nature of the market and the variability of the quality and availability, and the likely consequence was a commissioning model for both health and social care service provision. The SAB would need to maintain an overview of what the profile was locally. The Board also noted that whilst there was a lot of available data there was a lack of intelligence around the interface between quality prevention of safeguarding and the need for intervention.

The Chair thanked both Sir Paul Ennals and Dr Adi Cooper for presenting their reports to the Board.

RESOLVED:

That the annual safeguarding reports be noted.