Cumberland Children and Family Wellbeing are excited to launch the new Youth Connect Team, formerly known as The Complex Safeguarding Team.

They have recently rebranded and renamed themselves to highlight and emphasise the purpose and role of the team. They focus on building and encouraging positive connections for children and young people within their network, local community and services whilst breaking negative connections to keep our children safe.

Their Youth Connect Workers are based at both Cumbria House and West Cumbria House and cover all of Cumberland. They undertake Return Home Chats (RHC’s) and support children identified as vulnerable to or at risk of exploitation.

Youth Connect Workers offer direct support to children, families, including siblings (when affected), carers, and the wider professional network working with the child. The team do not case hold the child’s plan but work alongside case holders who remain the key worker for the family.

They will soon be launching their Prevention offer, which will focus on raising awareness and harm reduction. More information about referrals for preventative support will be shared in due course.

Visit the CSCP website for more information and how to contact the Cumberland Youth Connect Team

https://cumbriasafeguardingchildren.co.uk/child-exploitation-ce 

Since July 2015 the Counter Terrorism and Security Act gave specified authorities a legal duty to have 'due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.'

Cumbria Safeguarding Adults Board (CSAB) have created 'A Quick Guide to... Preventing Radicalisation in Cumbria'. We would highly recommend you take the time to read the guidance to find out more.

A Quick Guide to preventing radicalisation in Cumbria

Prevent Awareness Raising Session - Lunch & Learn

Cumbria Safeguarding Adults Board are offering a lunch and learn session on prevent awareness raising. Prevent is a national programme that aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It works to ensure that people who are susceptible to radicalisation are offered appropriate interventions, and communities are protected against radicalising influences. You can access the Government guidance about the Prevent Strategy here.

This session will raise awareness of issues pertinent to the Cumbria area in relation to key risk issues for children and vulnerable adults.

• Friday 16th May 2025 (12noon to 12:30pm) - via teams

Please click here to book your free place via EventBrite.

The Cumberland Safety Partnership is drafting a document that sets out their approach to tackling domestic abuse. The public consultation is now live and they are asking for your views. Is their approach effective and have they prioritised the right aims?

Help us tackle domestic abuse

Please read the summarised points within the draft Domestic Abuse Strategy and, in the free text boxes, your welcomed to provide what you think they should be considering other priorities.

Survey will be open until today (31 March 2025).

Domestic abuse is one of the partnership’s main four priorities, so they are keen to get this right and do all they can, collectively, to keep people in Cumberland safe from domestic abuse. 

A new ‘Partner Services’ area has been launched on Cumbria Constabulary’s website on 5 March to improve the sharing of non-urgent information by partner agencies.

The new partners forms include:

• Arrest request
• Report a missing person
• Make an interview request
• Community Partnership Intelligence
• Request Police help with a Mental Health Assessment
• Request a registered owner check for an abandoned vehicle

The new partner forms will provide a structured and detailed set of questions to ensure that the essential information required is gathered at the outset. The forms will improve data quality and triage the information to the Constabulary’s appropriate internal departments (if required) or be actioned for deployment.

The new forms are for the sharing of non-urgent information by partner agencies, if you want to report a crime then please do that using our online crime reporting service or by calling 101, or 999 in an emergency.

Please make sure to update any internal intranet sites/material you may have with the instructions above on the sharing of non-urgent information with Cumbria Constabulary.

Cumbria Constabulary's Command and Control room will be unable to take any information via email with effect from Monday 10 March  

Guidance on one of the new forms - ‘Partners Community Intelligence’ and how you can access it can be found here.

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.

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. 

The Crime and Policing Bill has been laid before Parliament. It includes provisions to introduce: new offences of child criminal exploitation and cuckooing (where a vulnerable person’s home is used by others to commit criminal activity). It aims to update the legislation around child sexual abuse material by introducing: new offences around using or promoting the use of AI to generate child sexual abuse material and moderating or administering websites that host child sexual abuse material; and a new power for Border Force officers, where reasonably suspected, to search the digital devices of individuals arriving in the UK for child sexual abuse material. It introduces a new statutory aggravating factor of grooming applicable in sentences around child sexual abuse offences, and updates the legislation around child abduction by a person connected with the child, where the child is taken out of the UK.  

The Bill introduces a new statutory duty for individuals undertaking key roles with responsibility for children and young people in England to report sexual abuse when they are made aware of it, alongside a new criminal offence of attempting to prevent someone reporting child sexual abuse. The Bill provides for a limited number of exceptions to the duty to report, which include those providing specified services (to be set out in regulations) that relate to the safety or wellbeing of children and where confidentiality is in the best interests of children. The Bill also proposes that adults working in regulated activity under supervision will be eligible for enhanced DBS checks. Different parts of the Bill apply to different parts of the UK.

Different parts of the Bill apply to different parts of the UK.

Find out more: Crime and Policing Bill 2025  

View the Bill: Crime and Policing Bill 

NSPCC Learning has published a two-part podcast episode about the work of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. The episode features Annie Hudson, the Chair of the Panel, and Jenny Coles, a Panel member, talking about what the Panel’s reports mean for people working with children and young people in England. Discussion points cover: the Panel’s core roles; how learning is shared locally and nationally; and the national review into child sexual abuse within the family environment and the Panel’s annual report.

Listen to the podcast: The work of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel  

Watch part one on YouTube: The work of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel – part one  

Watch part two on YouTube: The work of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel – part two