To report on the annual reports of the HSCB and HSAB, which address the work of multi-agency partners in Herefordshire in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults within the county, including achievements and areas for improvement, and priorities identified for 2016/17. 

The cabinet member for health and wellbeing thanked the independent chairs of the two safeguarding boards for their work. She stated that looking after the most vulnerable people was the most important work the council did. She noted that a great deal of good work goes on but that often it was only the failures that received notice.

The Manager of the Safeguarding Business Support Unit informed the meeting that the boards had a statutory requirement to produce annual reports for consideration by cabinet. The role of the boards was to co-ordinate the work of partner organisations involved in safeguarding and to ensure the effectiveness of this work. The business manager summarised the report and drew attention to the priorities for each board.

The cabinet member for health and wellbeing asked how Herefordshire council rated in terms of spend on safeguarding issues compared to other authorities. The director for children’s wellbeing responded that Herefordshire was in the highest spending quartile of authorities nationally.

The cabinet member for health and wellbeing asked for feedback on the national Wood review. Alan Wood, past president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, had been commissioned by the government to look at the effectiveness of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and make recommendations about their future. The review had highlighted issues with alignment of board areas to the boundaries of the relevant public bodies and stressed that continued partnership working was crucial. It identified the health service, police and local government as key partners. The report also put forward the case for national serious case reviews. The report had made recommendations that statutory arrangements for LSCBs be replaced and guidance on how this would be taken forward was awaited from the government.

A group leader asked if there were weaknesses in systems dealing with children who went missing and how long it usually took for police to inform the council that a child had been reported missing.

The business manager responded that there were areas in which the partner organisations could do better, for example in learning lessons from cases locally and nationally. There was greater recognition that children who went missing were people at risk rather than categorising them as exhibiting bad behaviour. An example of work still to do was the improvement of debriefs of children when they had been returned and sharing of information with partner agencies to identify common factors and threats. The response to a missing child would depend on the risk assessment surrounding each individual child but the police work closely with children’s services staff.

A cabinet support member asked what the impact of budget constraints would be on the safeguarding boards.

The director for children’s wellbeing reported that there would undoubtedly be an impact but noted that the experience nationally was that those services which were not performing well were also the most expensive to run. Early intervention to prevent issues from becoming more serious was most cost effective and focussing on this aspect of work  ...  view the full minutes text for item 40