Agenda item

Report CEF21-042

The Board considered the Bromley Safeguarding Children Partnership (BSCP) Annual Report 2020/21.

The annual report of the BSCP covered the period from April 2020 to March 2021 and was a transparent assessment of the effectiveness of safeguarding and the promotion of child welfare in Bromley.

The BSCP Partnership Manager advised that it was a statutory requirement for safeguarding partnerships to publish this report under Working Together 2018. In line with statutory guidance and best practice, the report would be submitted to the Chief Executive, Leader of the Council, the local police and crime commissioner, Chairman of the Health and Wellbeing Board, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care.

This had been the first full year of the BSCP under new multi-agency partnership arrangements. These had been put in place in response to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 and Working Together 2018 and replaced Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB). Safeguarding partnership arrangements had been improved to form the BSCP and its subgroups. The work of the partnership this year had inevitably been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic – since March 2020, Partnership Board and Executive meetings had concentrated on the direct and indirect safeguarding impact of the pandemic. In order to do so they had focused on the health and wellbeing of children and young people, their families and the partnership workforce, as well as emerging safeguarding themes, individual and collective practice, and how to develop and support innovative responses.

The Chair’s Foreword highlighted the achievements and challenges of the year:

·  the governance and accountability arrangements for the BSCP. This provided information about the structures in place that supported the BSCP to do its work effectively, as well as the roles of partners, including designated professionals and lay members.

·  the context for safeguarding children and young people in Bromley. This highlighted progress made by the partnership across a range of areas (e.g. Early Help, Private Fostering, child exploitation and the work of the Local Authority Designated Officer), as well as the challenges going forward.

·  the lessons that the BSCP had identified through its Learning and Improvement Framework, including Learning Reviews and multi-agency audits. This section also detailed the actions taken to improve child safeguarding and welfare as a result of this activity.

·  the range and impact of the multi-agency safeguarding training delivered by the BSCP (this year all training had been held virtual due to the pandemic).

·  progress against the BSCP pledge four key areas: health and wellbeing of the workforce; understanding vulnerability; a focus on getting the basics right; continuous improvement.

The BSCP Partnership Manager informed Board Members of a number of activities undertaken by the BSCP:

·  the Contingency Oversight Group (COG) meeting had been introduced to ensure that partners could collectively address issues linked to the health and well-being of the workforce, identify emerging safeguarding trends, and early critical interoperability issues;

·  a COVID-19 survey to help provide oversight and scrutiny of partners’ response to the pandemic;

·  in response to the increased threat of online harms highlighted by national agencies, the BSCP had rolled out the Safer Schools App to schools, parents and carers, free of charge; and

·  the establishment of a new Children’s Scrutiny Board and a MASH Strategic Group; the latter resulting in a review of capacity and capability across the partnership.

In response to a question, the BSCP Partnership Manager said that during the periods of lockdown there had been a reduction in the number of referrals received from schools, however the number of referrals received from the police had increased. Once pupils had returned, there was a surge in the number of referrals received from schools. The education sector was doing all that it could to ensure that no one “slipped through the net” and there was a lot of work taking place in relation to this.

The Chairman led Board Members in commending the Independent Chair of the BSCP and BSCP Partnership Manager for the work undertaken during 2020/21.

RESOLVED that the Bromley Safeguarding Children's Board Annual Report 2020/21 be noted.