Westmorland and Furness Practitioners Only
The new Westmorland & Furness Single Contact Form will go live on Monday 17 March 2025.
The new Single Contact Form can be submitted by:
- A parent or a child/young person seeking help and support or reporting a concern
- Professionals making a request for Early Help Assessment, Family Help Service or Child in Need
- Child Protection
- Child with disability assessment of need
There are four different referrer groups who can submit a Single Contact Form to the Multi-Agency Children's Hub (MACH):
- A professional who works with children, young people and families
- An adult who is worried about a child
- A child who is worried about themselves or someone else
- A parent or carer requesting an assessment for a child from the Children with a Disability Team
Further information regarding the launch of the new Single Contact Form will be published on Monday 10 March via a CSCP 5 Minute Briefing.
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We would like to remind organisations who provide a service to children and/or young people, or come into contact with them, you have a statutory requirement under either Section 11 of the Children Act 2024 or Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 to complete a safeguarding audit.
The online audit tool has been designed to support organisations and schools in fulfilling their statutory safeguarding responsibilities effectively and consistently. However, it will also enable you to assess the robustness of your safeguarding policies, practices and culture, identifying areas of strength and highlighting where improvements are necessary.
What does my organisation need to do:
- The Head of your organisation, Designated Safeguarding Lead or another appropriate person (as identified by the organisation’s Safeguarding Lead) should complete the Section 11/175 Audit Questionnaire, which can be accessed via the following link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PR3GPNG
- Please complete each answer as best as you can and offer any comments or supplementary information where indicated
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Please complete the Audit by Friday 14 March 2025
Once submitted, the CSCP will ensure the quality of the Section 11/175 audit returns, by undertaking further quality assurance activity to test the robustness of the submitted audits and to share learning and good practice.
Therefore, following the completion of your audit, you may be invited to attend a Quality Assurance Practitioner Group to moderate responses and agree any further action or support.
Your cooperation and commitment to safeguarding are essential in ensuring that children and young people across Cumbria remain safe and supported. By completing this audit, you are contributing to a collective effort to uphold the highest standards of children being safeguarded.
If you have any questions in relation to the audit, please do not hesitate to contact the CSCP Team: CSCP@cumbria.gov.uk
Safer Sleep Week, taking place 10-16 March 2025, is The Lullaby Trust’s national awareness campaign targeting anyone looking after a young baby. It aims to raise awareness of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and the simple advice that reduces the risk of it occurring.
What is Safer Sleep Week?
We know that greater awareness of safer sleep leads to a decrease in the numbers of babies dying.
Sadly around 3 babies a week still die from SIDS and if all parents were aware of safer sleep advice many lives could be saved. Around 700,000 babies are born every year in the UK and we need to continue to reach out to all new parents with our life-saving messages.
Safer Sleep Week 2025 will focus on what baby sleep should look like, versus when you may want to seek advice. We'll also bust the common myths that we see online surrounding baby sleep, and support you with ways to help when you're feeling sleep deprived.
Further information about the campaign will be published via our 5 Minute Briefings during Safer Sleep Week
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Child Exploitation is a form of abuse that involves the manipulation and/or coercion of young people under the age of 18.
On 18 March 2025, we want to highlight the issues surrounding CSE In Communities; for 2025 we are encouraging everyone to think, spot, and speak out against abuse and adopt a zero tolerance to child exploitation.#CEADay25.
Together, we can work to inform, educate and prevent child abuse within the UK.
For more information and how you can support #CEADay25, please visit NWG's SWAY, where you will find free downloads, social media images, resources, helpful links and key messages to help you make YOUR awareness-raising as impactful as possible.
Their informative SWAY contains information on:
- Spot the Signs
- Raise Awareness
- Helping Hands
- Real Stories
- Parents and Carers
- Abuse in Sport
- Safe to Play
- Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts
- Bystander
- Disruption
- Faith and Communities
- Exploitation, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
- Training and Awareness
- Legacy of Abuse
- Logos, Social Media and Key Messages
- Live Events Map
Also visit Stop-CE website for more information and resources.
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 In support of National Child Exploitation Day, Tuesday 18th March 2025, join Cumbria Safeguarding Children Partnership, for an insightful Trauma, Exploitation and Offending session with Sosa Henkoma, in partnership with Dignifi.
Julia, the Managing Director of Dignifi, will lead the session, sharing her own journey as the leader of a trauma company and a trauma survivor. She will share some awareness of exploitation and its traumatic impacts. Sosa will also share his lived experiences, as a criminally exploited child, explaining how he turned his life around to be a positive role model for his children, children at risk of being exploited and those currently experiencing exploitation.
Dignifi is an organisation who offer a range of services to develop trauma informed practice, including direct work with people who have experienced trauma and training and support for practitioners. Dignifi deliver a self-development programme that helps people who have experienced trauma to understand what has happened to them, they also offer advice and support to organisations of all sizes on how to develop more trauma informed and supportive environments for their staff to help them deliver such complex and emotionally draining work over the long-term.
Please find the session details below:
Date: Tuesday 18th March 2025
Time: 10am – 12noon
Location: Microsoft Teams
The session is open to anyone who is interested in finding out more about trauma, exploitation and offending. To find out more about this session please visit Trauma, Exploitation and Offending session - poster
To book your place on what is expected to be a fantastic session, please email: CSCP.Training@cumbria.gov.uk
Causeway have developed an Exploitation Risk Checker, which has been created in partnership with a team of Lived Experience Consultants, who themselves are survivors of modern slavery and exploitation.
Individuals can use the Risk Checker to answer a series of questions to see if they, or somebody they know, may be in a situation, or at risk, of criminal or sexual exploitation. The Exploitation Risk Checker can be accessed on our website Child Exploitation (CE) Guidance and Resources.
Please note that if you, or someone you know, think they are being exploited, please contact the Cumberland or Westmorland & Furness Safeguarding Hub: Report a concern about a child | Cumbria Safeguarding Children Partnership
If you, or someone you know, is in immediate danger, please contact the Police immediately on 999.
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Protocol for Improving the Standards of Care and Safeguarding in Private Residential Care Provisions and Supported Accommodation in Cumbria
On 5th February 2025, the CSCP launched a new “Protocol for Improving the Standards of Care and Safeguarding in Private Residential Care Provisions and Supported Accommodation in Cumbria”.
The purpose of this protocol is to improve information sharing, the care and safeguarding of children placed into private residential care and supported accommodation provisions within Cumbria.
This protocol applies to:
- Local Authorities Placing Children within Cumbria (Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness Council areas)
- Any private children’s home or supported accommodation Provision in Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness Council areas.
The protocol aims to:
- Set out the standards and expectations of the CSCP has of Local Authorities, residential care provisions and supported accommodation when children in care are living in the geographical footprint of Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness
- Sets out minimum standards that the CSCP has of residential care and supported accommodation providers who deliver care to children.
- Provide contact information for different partner agencies in Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness Council.
- Explain the role of the Multi Agency RADAR Group
The protocol can be accessed here: CSCP Local Protocol for Assessment
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The CSCP are delivering an array of training sessions. Please review below the current training being delivered either face to face or via teams.
Please also visit our learning zone on our website for all our eLearning courses offered to professionals and volunteers working with children/young people and their families who live in Cumbria.
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Safeguarding Level 3
The CSCP have secured further dates for Safeguarding in Practice - Working Together to Safeguard Children - Multi-agency approach to safeguard, protect and promote the welfare of children. The course is designed for Designated Safeguarding Leads and Deputy Designated Safeguarding Leads Only.
This training is part of a programme of learning events that practitioners and professionals, working with children, can access to support their learning at level 3.
- Tuesday 11 March 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Barrow Town Hall, Barrow
Important information - As of 1st April 2025, the CSCP will cease to exist. This means there will be two Safeguarding Partnerships for Cumbria - one based in the Cumberland area and one in the Westmorland and Furness area. Therefore, please see below training dates for each council area.
Cumberland
- Wednesday 2 April 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Carlisle
- Thursday 24 April 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Carlisle
- Tuesday 20 May 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Wigton
- Wednesday 4 June 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Carlisle
- Monday 23 June 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Carlisle
- Thursday 3 July 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Wigton
- Wednesday 16 July 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Wigton
- Tuesday 12 August 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Wigton
- Thursday 11 September 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Carlisle
Westmorland and Furness
- Thursday 15 May 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Penrith
- Thursday 26 June 2025 (1.30pm to 4.30pm) - Barrow
- Wednesday 17 September 2025 (9.30am to 12.30pm) - Kendal
To book your place, please email CSCP.Training@cumbria.gov.uk
Also delivered inline with National Child Exploitation Day, the CSCP are delivering a lunch and learn and a twilight session for professionals, on how to complete the 'child exploitation vulnerability checklist'.
The sessions will take place on the following date/times.
- Thursday 20 March 2025 (12.15pm - 1.30pm) - via teams
- Thursday 20 March 2025 (3.30pm - 4.45pm) - via teams
To book your place, please email CSCP.Training@cumbria.gov.uk
Child Exploitation Level 2
The CSCP recommend that anyone working with children should complete Child Exploitation (CE) Level 1 eLearning as mandatory training. Click here to access the training.
Those practitioners who work more closely with children and young people and are involved in their safety planning should complete Child Exploitation (CE) Level 2 training.
- Thursday 13 March 2025 (10am to 1pm) - Whitehaven
As of 1st April 2025, the Cumbria Safeguarding Children Partnership (CSCP) will cease to exist. This means there will be two Safeguarding Partnerships for Cumbria - one based in the Cumberland area and one in the Westmorland and Furness area. Therefore, please see below training dates for each council area.
Cumberland
- Tuesday 15 July 2025 (2pm to 5pm) - Carlisle
- Thursday 13 November 2025 (10am to 1pm) - Wigton
Westmorland and Furness
- Tuesday 29 April 2025 (1pm to 4pm) - Penrith
- Tuesday 1 July 2025 (10am to 1pm) - Barrow
To book your place, please email CSCP.Training@cumbria.gov.uk
Impact Chronology
The CSCP are delivering training on Impact Chronology. The following session will be face to face workshops and the aim of the session is to enable practitioners to develop skills in using impact chronologies.
Important information - As of 1st April 2025, the CSCP will cease to exist. This means there will be two Safeguarding Partnerships for Cumbria - one based in the Cumberland area and one in the Westmorland and Furness area. Therefore, please see below training dates for each council area.
Cumberland
- Wednesday 30 April 2025 (10am to 12pm) - Wigton
To book your place, please email CSCP.Training@cumbria.gov.uk
IN THE NEWS
The NSPCC has published a news story on contacts to its helplines concerning parental substance misuse. Figures show: the NSPCC Helpline received an average of 31 contacts a day in 2023/24 by UK adults worried about the impact of a parent or carer’s substance misuse on a child; and Childline delivered 440 counselling sessions in 2023/24 with children and young people who were worried about their parent’s substance misuse. The news story also includes advice for children living with alcohol or substance misuse.
Read the news story: Our Helpline is contacted more than 30 times a day about parental substance misuse
See also on NSPCC Learning: Parents with substance use problems
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