Bexley Local Safeguarding Children Board

The Local Safeguarding Children Board ( LSCB) is a statutory requirement set out in the Children Act 2004 which gives duties to ensure that all agencies work together for the welfare of children.

The main responsibilities of the LSCB as set out in section 14 of the Children Act 2004 are to co-ordinate and quality assure the safeguarding children activities of member agencies in Bexley.

Bexley LSCB is independently chaired and meets quarterly. It has a wide membership reflecting the safeguarding partnerships across the borough. The Board is currently restructuring and by June 2012 a Business Leads Forum will be in place to support the Board in pushing forward the Business Plan and reviewing its progress.

Information on the work of the LSCB, policies & protocols can be found on the Bexley LSCB website (link on right hand side).

The LSCB sets the strategic priorities that reflect both government and local priorities for the safeguarding agenda, the detailed Business Plan (publication date June 2012) is based on these generic areas.

• Making communities safer for children and young people through a multi-agency approach to safeguarding issue
• Increasing the participation of children and young people in the work of the Board
• Ensuring that our organisations working with children are safe through the work on Safer Recruitment and Managing Allegations against staff and volunteers

As well as the core business of child protection these priorities are reflected through the LSCB training programme.

Chapter 3 of 'Working Together to Safeguard Children 2010' sets out the roles and responsibility of the Local Safeguarding Children Board. It states the following:

'It is the responsibility of the LSCB to ensure that single agency and inter-agency training on safeguarding and promoting welfare is provided in order to meet local needs. This covers both the training provided by single agencies to their own staff, and multi agency training where staff from more than one agency train together.'

In order to execute this function Bexley LSCB has in place a training programme which offers three levels of core training(including refreshers) in respect of child protection and safeguarding and a range of specialist courses on safeguarding issues. In addition there is an E-learning package that covers the first level of the core programme.

This comprehensive programme enhances the ability of individuals working for both the statutory or voluntary agencies to be able to identify children in need of safeguarding and how to respond. In the last year in excess of 800 individuals attended the various programmes.

Training is time consuming and costly so feedback and continuous review is essential to ensure the programmes remain fit for purpose. This year's training programme will continue with all the courses that were run last year but there will be some new additions and some fundamental changes to the administration of the courses.

Over the past year we have seen an emphasis on the importance of "Early Help" for children and families in the Munro and Allen reviews. The crucial role of all agencies in identifying problems and putting in support early has been stressed. Bexley's response has been to introduce the BEAN (Bexley Early Assessment of Need), our local version of the CAF. An extensive programme of training has been commissioned to assist the workforce in undertaking BEANs confidently and ensuring good outcomes for children and families.

Serious Case Reviews have highlighted the difficulty of working with hostile and hard to reach families. This was a feature in the Baby P, Khyra Ishaak and many other cases and will be a feature of their work all too familiar with many in our workforce. We have therefore commissioned a specialist course addressing the challenges of working with such families and looking at how we safeguard children living in those circumstances.

The safeguarding of Disabled Children was brought to the fore in a recent Serious Case Review in Bexley. In addition to the one day training course in this area we are going to run workshops looking at different areas of complex needs and these will be advertised throughout the year.

We have been looking at how to arrange training more effectively across boroughs and to maximise the range of courses available. We have therefore joined up with Bromley's Safeguarding Children Board to commission two courses jointly. Therefore one of the Parental Substance Misuse courses and one of the Parental learning Difficulty courses will be offered jointly to Bexley and Bromley staff. In addition when we have courses which are below numbers spaces will be offered to Bromley staff and Bromley will reciprocate-at present they offer one course which we do not- Fabricated or Induced Illness-and will offer Bexley staff spaces on this if they are below numbers. We will review these arrangements at the end of the year to see if they can be continued and co-operation increased next year.

From April 2012 participants will be e-mailed handouts prior to their attendance on a training course. They will be asked to print their own handouts and bring them along on the day. It is hoped that this will reduce waste-it will also assist participants in maintaining a paperless office as they will be able to save the handouts to their computer.

Training is an essential tool in the process of effective child protection, and these changes will ensure that the training being supported by Bexley LSCB remains relevant. I ask that all agencies continue to enable their staff to attend training.