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Dear Partners,
Welcome to the 1st edition of the Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership newsletter.
Working Together 2018 introduces a requirement for Safeguarding Partners, the Local Authority, the Clinical Commissioning Group and the Chief Officer of Police, to agree ways to co-ordinate their safeguarding services; act as a strategic leadership group in supporting and engaging others; and implement local and national learning including from serious child safeguarding incidents. This replaces the requirement for local areas to have a Local Safeguarding Children’s Board and offers areas increased flexibility in the way that they operate.
Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership published its arrangements on 26 June 2019 and intends to implement these arrangements by 29 September 2019.
Read more details regarding the new arrangements.
The team will be working hard over the coming months to ensure that the arrangements are implemented and that they focus on achieving better outcomes for children, young people and their families. Please see below for information on current developments.
Read a version of the guide to the new arrangements for children and young people.
Find out about the new arrangements in 60 seconds with our One Minute Guide.
Right Help Right Time is a guidance for practitioners in all agencies and the aim is to provide early interventions for children, young people and their families in Coventry. This is to prevent them from moving towards higher levels of need, and to reduce the levels of need once identified. The guidance will support professionals to identify the support that a child, young person or family may need and the best way for this support to be provided. The Right Help Right Time guidance replaces all previous Threshold Guidance/Level of Needs documents.
We have organised a series of multi-agency workshops which are running up until March 2020 and the aim is to provide more in-depth detail to professionals and support with using the guidance.
Read more about Right Help Right Time on our website where you will find both the guidance and details of how to book onto one of the training sessions.
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The Coventry Safeguarding Children Partnership and Coventry Children's Services are pleased to announce that new guidance has been developed for front line professionals working with young people deemed to be at low risk of Child Sexual Exploitation.
The guidance includes contributions from agencies across the city including West Midlands Police, Health partners, the Horizon team and various voluntary services and organisations.
The guidance is designed to be a quick, easy to use first reference guide packed with information to assist practitioners from all agencies. It includes information on risk definitions, tips on building trusted relationships, starting a difficult conversation, intelligence sharing and more, with useful links to documents such as the screening tool, MARF and the West Midlands Police Intelligence Form. It also includes a local directory of organisations who work with both professionals and directly with young people themselves.
Read more in our guidance or our more accessible version.
(Please note if you are supporting a young person who is at medium or high risk, please complete the screening tool and the referral to the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). If you need advice or guidance, you contact the CSE team on 024 7678 8555).
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As part of the new arrangements we are excited to introduce the Relevant Agency Forum, a brand new forum that will bring together front-line managers from organisations across the city to talk about safeguarding our children and young people. The forum will be about sharing information, making sure information gets to front line professionals, identifying emerging issues, facilitating organisations working together and more.
The forum will be held 3-4 times a year for about two hours each session. If you would like to become a regular member or would like to present or share something with the forum please contact Becky Pearson, the Development Officer for the CSCP at becky.pearson@coventry.gov.uk
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Coventry City Council, West Midlands Police and local partners CATCH 22 and Positive Youth Foundation has been successful in bidding for the Supporting Families Against Youth Crime fund. The project will deliver a three tier approach to offer support to young people and families where there is a concern that a young person is possibly at risk of or being exploited by a gang. The project will:
- Raise awareness amongst professionals, parents, and community members about gang related issues including criminal exploitation of children; raise awareness amongst school aged children and young people about gang issues and ways to seek help to avoid being involved in gangs.
- Provide young people on the periphery of gangs or involved in gangs with mentors to help them move away from gangs and enable them to achieve better outcomes; and
Read more about the screening tool.
A screening tool must be completed for each young person where there are concerns. Completed screening tools are to be sent to: ChildexploitationSPOC@coventry.gov.uk
Please be aware this is not an immediate response service and you may not receive a contact back on the same working day. If you are concerned that a child or children are at risk of immediate harm or that a crime has been committed against a child or children, it is your responsibility to take appropriate action to ensure that all children are safeguarded: Coventry MASH (Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub) Email: MASH@coventry.gov.uk Tel: 024 7678 8555 and/or West Midlands Police on 101 or 999.
During a period of four weeks in the summer of 2017, three Croydon teenagers died in separate incidents. Croydon Safeguarding Children Board has since carried out a thematic review on Vulnerable Adolescents that was published this February. The purpose of the thematic review was to determine whether there were any patterns in the children's experiences, for example where they lived, where they went to school, their family care and the multi-agency services that were provided or offered. The intention was to learn from the experiences of these children to inform future service provision. The Review resulted in five key findings and 15 recommendations.
The CSCP has produced a briefing, as the learning from the review is not specific to Croydon but has national implications. Please, read our briefing and reflect on the learning that was identified.
Please read our briefing.
Find our Twitter feed at - https://twitter.com/coventrycscp
Find our website at - https://www.coventry.gov.uk/cscp
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