Introduction
Welcome back to what seems to be slightly longer days and hopefully signs of spring! Below is a summary of changes from Working Together, which was released on 15th December 2023 replacing its previous version from 2018. We advise that DSLs familiarize themselves with this summary and the document itself, alongside wider guidance. Please ensure that governors/trustees who have a lead safeguarding role are also aware. Key within this version is how education should play a fully integrated role in working alongside current statutory partners, Children’s Social Care, Health and the Police. We anticipate that Education will become a formal, statutory forth partner by 2025 and will keep you posted as to any progress toward this. If you have utilised the Devon template safeguarding policy, the embedded link will automatically take you to the most recent version of Working Together. For schools and settings who have developed their own policy, you should ensure that this is the case.
At the end of February, Caroline leaves to take up her new role. Caroline has been an outstanding member of the team and will be greatly missed. While I expect the advert for this post to be listed on the Devon Jobs website in the next few days, we anticipate a period where we won’t be at full capacity while the recruitment process and any period of notice for the successful candidate needs to be completed. Therefore, please do accept our apologies in advance if we are unable to respond as swiftly as we would normally like to any calls or emails. Similarly, those of you who are members of the DSL Facebook page may notice less posts than when Caroline was ‘in-charge’ - I’ve taken on this role and am on a steep learning curve!
As ever, thank you for everything you do!
Jon Galling, Senior Education Safeguarding Officer
Many of you will be aware that the overarching safeguarding document, Working Together, previously released in 2018 was updated at the very end of the autumn term. We are grateful to our partnership colleagues Jackie Colby and Kate Nightingale for the summary below which highlights the key updates in Working together to safeguard children 2023 - Statutory guidance on multi-agency working to help, protect and promote the welfare of children.
This Department for Education (DfE) statutory guidance sets out what organisations and agencies who have functions relating to children must and should do to help, protect and promote the welfare of all children and young people under the age of 18 in England.
The 2023 edition replaces Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018, which underwent a limited factual update in 2020. This new edition of Working Together is central to delivering on the strategy set out in Stable Homes, Built on Love (2023), which outlines the Government’s commitment to support every child to grow up in a safe, stable and loving home.
In conjunction with the release of the "Working together to Safeguard Children 2023" statutory guidance, the Government has provided additional resources to support the effective implementation of safeguarding measures. These resources form a comprehensive toolkit to support professionals and organisations in creating a safeguarding environment and culture for the welfare of the children and young people we work with.
Key Additions include:
A Shared Responsibility - The inclusion of this new chapter underscores a crucial aspect of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children – the necessity for robust multi-agency collaboration. Recognising that positive outcomes for children are intricately linked to the strength of collaborative efforts, the emphasis is on the importance of coordination and cooperation among various agencies and organisations involved in child welfare as well as a child-centred approach within a whole family focus.
Multi-agency Expectations for all Practitioners – these must be structured across three levels; strategic leaders, senior and middle managers, direct practice.
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Shared goals - align efforts toward a common goal: safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and families.
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Learn with and from each other - foster a culture of continuous learning and mutual exchange of knowledge.
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Have what they need to help families - a be equipped with the necessary resources and support to effectively assist families.
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Acknowledge and appreciate differences - embrace and respect diversity, recognizing and valuing unique qualities.
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Challenge each other - encourage a culture of constructive challenge and feedback, promoting accountability and continuous improvement.
Working with Parents and Carers – the following four principles should be followed:
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Building strong, positive, trusting and co-operative relationships;
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Use of respectful, non-blaming, clear and inclusive communication and language which is adapted to everyone’s needs;
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Enabling parents and carers to participate and make decisions by providing the right information, keeping them updated and directing them to further resources if necessary;
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Involving parents and carers in the design of processes and services that they use.
Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements – there are new roles and responsibilities for the three safeguarding partners (local authority, police and health). The head of each of these will be referred to as the “lead safeguarding partner” (LSP) and they will have to appoint a “delegated safeguarding partner” (DSP).
Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSP) are:
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The heads of each statutory safeguarding partners agency (for local authorities, the LSP should be the Head of Paid Service, also known as the Chief Executive).
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Responsible for holding their own organisation or agency to account, speaking and making decisions on behalf of their agency and meeting statutory and legislative duties of their agency.
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Joint responsible for the proper involvement of all relevant agencies and should work as a team, as opposed to as a voice for their own organisation.
Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSP) will be appointed by the LSP of each partner agency and responsible for operational delivery.
DSP and Chair – one DSP will be appointed to the role of Partnership Chair for Multi-Agency Arrangements. This role can be rotated between the DSPs if deemed appropriate by LSPs.
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facilitate partner discussions
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provide greater continuity
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act as a single point of contact for the Partnership
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not replace existing formal complaints procedures and does not provide independent scrutiny.
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replace the need for a local area to maintain another chair or independent chair
Schools, Colleges and Education Providers
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LSPs should have a representative from the education sector present at strategic discussions
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Local education and childcare providers working with children up to the age of 18 will be included in local arrangements
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LSPs should consider including voluntary, charity, social enterprise (VSCE) organisations, childcare settings and sports clubs in their safeguarding arrangements
Providing Help, Support and Protection – this is split into three sections: Early help; Safeguarding and promoting the Welfare of Children; Child Protection.
Section 1 – Early Help (EH)
Considering family needs in the context of early help
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EH assessments should consider the needs of different family members and how they impact on each other including education, mental and physical health, financial stability, housing, substance and crime.
- Specific needs should be considered such as disabilities, language spoken, fathers or male carers, parents who identify as LGBTQ.
- EH services focus should be on improving the way families function as well as developing the family’s capacity to establish positive routines and solve problems.
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Where services are involved, family networks supporting the child and parents should be enabled to make family group decisions – such as family group conferences.
Education and Childcare Settings – safeguarding professionals should work closely with education and childcare settings to share information, identify and understand risks of harm and ensure children and families receive timely support.
Section 2 – Safeguarding and Promoting the Welfare of Children
Children’s Social Care Assessments – these should consider:
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parenting capacity of both resident or non-resident parents and carers, and also any other adult living in the household that can respond to the child’s needs;
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influence of the child’s family network and any other adults living in the household, as well as the impact of the wider community and environment.
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Will be allocated by the local authority and their partners once a referral is made and accepted.
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This role can be held by a range of people including social workers.
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For child protection enquiries, the lead practitioner should also be a social worker.
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Will have the appropriate skills, knowledge and capacity to carry out assessments, undertake direct work with families and co-ordinate services.
Supporting Disabled Children and Their Carers
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Assessments should focus on the specific needs of the child and family, be strengths-based and gather effective information to support the best outcome for the child and family.
- Local authorities should have a named Designated Social Care Officer (DCSO) role to improve links between the social care services and the special educational needs and disability (SEND) system.
Harm Outside the Home – practitioners and professionals should:
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Consider the needs, experiences and vulnerabilities of the individuals or groups who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, harm outside the home – including from criminal exploitation, sexual exploitation or serious violence.
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Should work with relevant partner agencies to consider the influence of groups or individuals perpetrating the harm.
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Should assess whether a child who is experiencing, or is at risk of experiencing, harm outside the home is in need under Section 17 or 47 of the Children Act 1989.
Section 3 – Child Protection
National Multi-Agency Practice Standards – this guidance now includes new multi-agency standards for all practitioners working in services and settings that come into contact with children who may be suffering or have suffered significant harm within or outside the home.
Operational Responsibilities
Changes to the way in which prison and probation services exchange information with children’s social care and other agencies has been introduced.
Learning from Serious Child Safeguarding Incidents
Guidance states that Local Authorities should “notify the Secretary of State for Education and OFSTED of the death of a care leaver up to and including the age of 24”. Although this is not a statutory requirement, if local partners think that there is learning to be gained from the death of a looked after child or care leaver, even if the criteria for serious incident are not met, they may wish to conduct a local safeguarding practice review.
Further information and opportunities to explore these changes will be offered throughout the spring and summer term. Key to these changes will be ensuring that education, as an ‘agency’ is fully engaged with the Partnership. We advise that governors/trustees are made aware of the key changes within this summary and that any relevant policies refer to Working Together 2023. For schools utilizing the Devon template policy, the embedded link will automatically link to the current document. The Devon template policy MASH contacts poster has also been amended to reflect the professional's consultation line, this and the reference to Working Together is included in the summary of changes.
School key contacts
In line with the statutory functions, we have within DCC, we would like to keep up to date with professionals within schools to allow ease of communication between schools and LA.
In order to do this we're asking schools to complete the form half termly. The information provided will be held centrally in Education and Learning, to aid our service users to support/make contact with the correct personnel.
When completing the form, if the same staff member holds multiple roles, then please provide the same name and email in the appropriate role boxes.
Thank you to everyone who has had a role in completing and returning their annual S175 safeguarding audit. These will now be analysed and evaluated with a detailed presentation prepared for the Education Advisory Group (EAG), to scrutinise after Easter. The outcome of this analysis will enable this group which has stakeholders and representatives from all areas and aspects of education, to make recommendations to the Partnership Executive and inform us (the Education Safeguarding team) as to any aspects where resources or support are required. We will also ensure that the outcomes from the audit are shared through the summer term newsletters and forums.
We will also soon start the process of preparing for next year's S175 and, as ever, welcome any thoughts on how, within our ability we can make this process as streamline and useful as possible.
We have updated our advice for these checks and ask that all DSL’s distribute this guidance to all who have a role in recruitment checks including maintaining the Single Central Record (SCR). These checks, part of school’s pre-employment process’ could include a requirement to check un-qualified teachers who meet the criteria of ‘teaching’. The OMG guide offers advice on how to decide if this criterion is met. Ofsted, in their recent inspections have been keen to explore this aspect and therefore having sight of the guidance should support any such line of enquiry. Further to this guidance, the DfE portal access arrangements are changing, we understand this is likely to take effect mid-April.
You can now use new services instead of Employer Access to:
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check a teacher’s record
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check the children’s barred list
These new services will replace Employer Access in April 2024. We’ll send you an email when the date has been confirmed.
Check a teacher’s record
This new service allows you to search for a teacher using their last name and date of birth. You do not need their teacher reference number (TRN).
A teacher’s record includes their qualifications and also tells you if they:
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failed their induction or probation
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have been prevented from teaching by the Teaching Regulation Agency or General Teaching Council for England
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have been found guilty of serious misconduct but not prevented from teaching
Check the children’s barred list
The children’s barred list contains details of people who are not allowed to work with children.
The list is usually checked as part of an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. You should only check the children’s barred list separately if a new employee either:
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will start working with children while waiting for the result of an enhanced DBS check
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does not need an enhanced DBS check because they’ve worked with children in a school or college within the last 3 months
Qualified teacher learning and skills (QTLS) status
School managers and governors
Claire Birch, Community Safety Officer, South Devon and Dartmoor Community Safety Partnership, has shared below message which includes resources:
The second talks about the online challenges our young people face today and is available at Let's Talk Online Challenges. These recordings are openly available for everyone to view please feel free to share along with Let's Talk Healthy Relationships and they are around 20 minutes long. If you have seen our bitesize recordings and have any feedback we would be really grateful if you could complete this very short questionnaire Bitesize feedback as feedback is very important to us and helps develop future sessions.'
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Monday 4th March (F2F) 9.30-11.30 – Hartnoll Hotel
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Thursday 7th March (Virtual) 13.30-15.30
To book a place on this term’s forum visit the shop.
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Don’t forget, if you are a DES Safeguarding team subscribing school you can attend a termly forum as part of your subscription. Just use your voucher code at checkout.
The flyer below will be shared with schools regarding workshops, funded from the School’s DSG grant, to provide staff with techniques for supporting students struggling with emotional or mental health issues.
Many will be aware of the growing information from several organisations relating to how children are posting images of an indecent nature. The recently published BBC article, 'Teenagers accused in half of child abuse cases', highlights this and offers some useful insights to support staff awareness of both the risks and prevalence of this aspect of safeguarding.
Following requests from schools, we have developed this session to support schools in meeting the March 2023 standards. The session, lasting 1.5hrs enables all staff, governors and volunteers to understand their collective role.
If you are interested in this session or would like to receive more information, please do get in touch at Jonathan.Galling@devon.gov.uk
It can be quite a balancing act ensuring that there is the right amount of information in your reception areas and on websites for visitors and parents. Now might be a good time, to have a little spring clean of the information available, reviewing the leaflets, links and posters. Some may not work, exist or even look a little outdated, others may have the wrong contact details, email addresses or in fact have been discontinued by their original source.
One such leaflet you may want to remove from your reception and website area is ‘Preventing Terrorism and Radicalisation within our Communities’ this was last issued in 2013, however you may want to include:
This March, the Devon Safeguarding Children Partnership (DevonSCP) is supporting the #StopItNow campaign to deter online child sexual abuse in Devon and Cornwall.
As part of a month of activity, the DevonSCP will be running a series of 4x webinars to raise awareness of the scale of child sexual abuse and to highlight the support available for practitioners.
The webinars will take place every Monday in March from 1pm – 2pm:
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Monday 4th March - Liz Jones, from the CSA Centre on scale & nature with specific local data on child sexual abuse and the impact on children and young people.
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Monday 11th March - Rachael Courage, on courageous conversations around disclosure.
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Monday 18th March - Louise Barraclough and Lyndsay Howell, on Devon and Cornwall Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARC) as a place of hope, healing, holistic physical and psychological care, and an important part of the therapeutic journey to recovery.
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Monday 25th March - Donald Findlater, Director of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s Stop It Now on prevention, deterrence and disruption.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of #CEADay. You may be planning some CPD for staff to raise awareness or perhaps learning sessions for pupils. If this is the case, you will find this SWAY link really useful. It has a huge amount of information and resources to support you developing your #CEADay on:
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Spot the Signs
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Raise Awareness
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Helping Hands
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Real Stories
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Parents and Carers
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Abuse in Sport
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Safe to Play
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Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts
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Bystander
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Disruption
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Faith and Communities
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Exploitation, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
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Training and Awareness
We’re excited to confirm our speakers for this year's conference following on from last year's event which was a huge success. Please book your place here – 100+ have already done so! Those attending last year will remember what a huge impact all our speakers had alongside the opportunity to be among colleagues with a safeguarding role. We are therefore delighted to again invite you to join us at Sandy Park, Exeter on Thursday 20th June. Feedback from last year:
“Excellent and informative also a great opportunity to meet other safeguarding leads and discuss current issues.”
“Really informative conference opening my eyes to wider issues and what as professionals should be looking out for within our safeguarding capacity.”
“The conference was informative and inspiring. The guest speakers were engaging and I feel that it was a valuable experience for my current role.”
“Inspiring and eye-opening; I was able to gain a lot of good information to bring back to my setting and to network with colleagues old and new.”
Many schools will be planning their September INSET days. As a team, we have already been booked for most slots at the start of September, so please do get in touch if you’d like a session delivered either on-site or virtually.
Forthcoming training dates – please book via the DES shop:
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Safeguarding Forum - 04/03/2024 (Hartnoll Hotel)
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Child protection initial training - 04 & 05/03/2024 (Online)
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Child protection refresher training - 08/03/2024 (Buckfast Abbey)
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Child protection initial training - 11 & 12/03/2024 (Future Skills Centre)
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Safeguarding Forum - 19/03/2024 (Online)
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Child protection refresher training - 20/03/2024 (Online)
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Child protection refresher training - 22/04/2024 (Future Skills Centre)
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Child protection initial training - 24 & 25/04/2024 (Future Skills Centre)
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Child protection refresher training - 01/05/2024 (Hartnoll Hotel)
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Child protection initial training - 07 & 08/05/2024 (Barnstaple Hotel)
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Child protection initial training - 09 & 10/05/2024 (Buckfast Abbey)
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Child protection refresher training - 15/05/2024 (Online)
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“Really excellent two days so thank you. What could have been a long two days have flown by so quickly so thank you. Quality resources and quality delivery!”
“Trainer was outstanding. Informative, knowledgeable and delivered the session in a really accessible way that helps prepare to actually do the role.”
“Excellently run. Trainer was very knowledgeable and delivered the training with clarity and professionalism. Facilities were good. Some of the best training I've attended. Left feeling much more informed and with clarity around the broader safeguarding process.”
“The training helped me to piece together the different elements of the safeguarding role - which I was aware of but had little experience or knowledge of - and understand what was involved with each element. There was a lot of information to digest, but it was delivered in an engaging way.”
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