Children's care professionals partnerships

Local Safeguarding Children's Partnership

Thurrock Local Safeguarding Children's Partnership (LSCP) supports the safeguarding and the welfare of children.

The safeguarding partners, as defined in the Children's Act 2004, amended by the Children and Social Work Act 2017, are:

  • Thurrock Council
  • Essex Police
  • Thurrock Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)

Scope

The LSCP supports the safeguarding and the welfare of children through:

  • preventative activity
  • proactive activity
  • responsive activity

To prevent harm and impairment of the health or development of children, and to ensure all children are provided with safe and effective care as they are growing up, the partnership:

  • has mechanisms in place to identify abuse and neglect wherever they may occur
  • works to increase the understanding of safeguarding children issues in the professional and wider community, promoting the message that 'safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility'
  • helps to ensure that organisations working or in contact with children operate safe recruitment and safe workforce practices that take into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children
  • monitors the effectiveness of organisations' implementation of their duties under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 and 157/175 Education Act 2002
  • helps to ensure that children know who they can contact when they have concerns about their own or others' safety and welfare
  • helps to ensure that adults (including those who are harming children) know who they can contact if they have a concern about a child or young person
  • leads in the Local Safeguarding Children Practice Review (previously SCR) process
  • supports the development of effective local safeguarding strategies

To be proactive and undertake targeted work, the partnership:

  • safeguards and promotes the welfare of groups or particular groups of children who are potentially more vulnerable than the general population – for example, children living away from home, children who have run away from home, children in the youth justice system including custody, young carers, disabled children, looked-after children, and children and young people affected by gangs or serious youth violence
  • provides the framework and procedures for work with children and families where a child has been identified as being 'in need' under the Children's Act 1989, but where the child is not suffering or at risk of suffering significant harm

To be responsive, the partnership undertakes work to protect children who are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm, including:

  • children abused and neglected within families, including those harmed, in the context of domestic abuse; as a consequence of the impact of substance misuse or parental mental ill health
  • children abused outside of families by adults known to them – for example, those in fear of, or subject to, forced marriage, honour-based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM)
  • children abused and neglected by professional carers; within an institutional setting, or anywhere else where children are cared for away from home
  • children abused by strangers
  • children abused by other young people
  • young perpetrators of abuse
  • children abused through sexual exploitation and child trafficking
  • young victims of crime
  • children of offenders

At all times the Thurrock LSPB takes account of the need to promote equality of opportunity and to meet the diverse needs of all children living in our communities.

Functions

The core functions of the partnership are set out in Section 3 of the Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 guidance and the Child and Social Work Act 2017.

Thurrock LSCP functions to generate more effective arrangements throughout the whole partnership in relation to:

  • protecting children from maltreatment
  • preventing impairment of children's health or development
  • ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
  • enabling children to have optimum life chances in entering adulthood successfully, particularly in terms of being healthy and staying safe
  • ensuring that lessons are learned by sharing best child protection and safeguarding practice generally, and – in particular – from episodes including when a child dies, or suffers serious harm when maltreatment is considered to have been a contributory factor
  • ensuring that work to protect children from harm is properly co-ordinated and effective is the primary function of the partnership

These functions will be performed by:

  • participating in the planning of services for children in the authority to help ensure that the safeguarding of children is a primary consideration – this will include contributing to the development of safeguarding arrangements and establishing effective strategic arrangements with the Health and Wellbeing Board
  • developing policies and procedures for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children including: refreshing the SET Child Protection Procedures, establishing clear thresholds for access to services – from early intervention through to specialist services; as well as promoting safe recruitment practices, supervision and the investigation of any allegations made against people working with children
  • communicating and raising awareness of wider safeguarding issues with practitioners, children, families and carers and the wider community, helping the partnership in shaping its strategic agenda
  • supporting the Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) during the transition to the new Child Death Review Process, collecting and analysing information about child deaths raising awareness of preventable deaths
  • monitoring the effectiveness of what is done to safeguard and promote the welfare of children through monitoring, evaluation and audit activity and offering advice with regards to making improvements

All "relevant" partnership members must have effective arrangements in place to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in accordance with their duties under Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 or Section 157 or 175 of the Education Act 2002. These arrangements include organisations having in place and being able to evidence:

  • senior management commitment
  • a statement of accountability
  • clear lines of accountability
  • service development
  • staff training
  • safer recruitment practices
  • effective inter-agency working
  • information sharing
  • working with individual children
  • monitoring and inspection arrangements
  • undertaking learning and practice reviews where a child has died or has been seriously harmed in circumstances where abuse or neglect is known or suspected
  • through identifying serious incidents relevant to the area and advising on lessons that can be learned – this includes multi-agency leaning reviews or audit activity to learn from incidents and improve local safeguarding children arrangements or practice – through local practice reviews
  • delivering and evaluating relevant multi agency training
  • helping to ensure the coordination and implementation of services for children who are privately fostered
  • helping to ensure that children within Thurrock have access to appropriate and understandable information when they have concerns about staying safe

The effective implementation of Thurrock LSCP's objectives will contribute to an overall outcome of helping to ensure the well-being of children and young people.