Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP)
Safeguarding Children Partnerships are a statutory requirement of the Children Act 2004 (as amended by the Children and Social Work Act 2017), the arrangements for which are set out in statutory guidance known as ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’.
In accordance with the Act and statutory guidance, the following bodies in Warwickshire are identified as the core ‘safeguarding partners’ for WSCP:
- Warwickshire County Council
- Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated care Board (ICB)
- Chief Officer of Warwickshire Police
These three partners have a joint and equal duty to make arrangements to work together as a team to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in a local area, and to include and develop the role of wider local organisations and agencies in the process.
The membership of WSCP is therefore further extended to include other relevant agencies that the safeguarding partners consider appropriate, such as local district/borough councils, West Midlands Ambulance Service, Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service, Children’s Social Care, Public Health, and local hospitals, etc.
The Police and Crime Commissioner is not a ‘safeguarding partner’ under the Act and statutory guidance, but has an important role in supporting the work of WSCP, working closely with partners to ensure a unified and joined-up approach, assisting in the coordination of activity, and promoting continuous learning and improvement. A representative from the Commissioner’s Office therefore attends WSCP as part of the extended membership.
WSCP undertakes its responsibilities by ensuring that:
- There is a clear, shared vision for how to improve outcomes for children locally across all levels of need and all types of harm.
- When a child is identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm there is a prompt, appropriate and effective response to ensure the protection and support of the child.
- Organisations and agencies are challenged appropriately, effectively holding one another to account.
- Agencies seek the voice of children and families combined with the knowledge of experienced practitioners and insights from data, to provide a greater understanding of the areas of strength and/or improvement within arrangements and practice.
- Information is sought, analysed, shared, and broken down by protected characteristics to facilitate more accurate and timely decision-making for children and families, and to understand outcomes for different communities of children.
- Effective collection, sharing and analysis of data, to enable early identification of new safeguarding risks, issues, emerging threats, and joined-up responses across relevant agencies.
- Senior leaders promote and embed a learning culture which supports local services to become more reflective and implement changes to practice
Further information about these arrangements can be found on the WSCP section of the Warwickshire Safeguarding website.
Families First Partnership
The Families First Partnership in Warwickshire aims to rebalance children’s social care and avoid costly crisis intervention by offering more meaningful and effective early support – helping more children stay with their families in safe loving homes and protecting vulnerable children from harm.
Working in partnership with the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board and Warwickshire Police, the county council has established new delivery models for family help, child protection, family networks and multi-agency safeguarding arrangements ahead of a national transformation. Key to this is the creation of multi-agency teams, which will be a great benefit to families and practitioners. The approach is explained in an animation which echoes Warwickshire’s commitment to help children and young people be healthy, happy, heard, safe and skilled.
Warwickshire’s programme is making sure targeted early help is available for families suffering domestic abuse, addiction, or poor mental health; to help them overcome adversity before issues escalate and children are put at risk of harm.
Where child protection is necessary this is led by new Lead Child Protection Practitioners and the wider family is always involved in decision-making. A Multi-Agency Child Protection Team is in place made up of a Lead Child Protection Practitioner, Police Detective Sergeants, Police Liaison Officers, Safeguarding Nurses, and Education Officers who work closely together with and around families who need this support.
