To receive a presentation from the chairman of the Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board (HSCB) on the work of the board in 2016/17.

The chair of Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board presented the report. She explained that the role of chair included meeting regularly with key leaders across partner organisations, providing challenge and looking for ways that partners could work together. The annual report included an assessment of the effectiveness of child safeguarding in the area and noted that 1 serious case review had been published during the year 2016-17. The HSCB had focussed on 4 key areas during the year covered by the report: child sexual exploitation and missing children, the child’s journey through the child protection process, childhood neglect and early help. The chair of the board summarised the work carried out under these headings and progress achieved.

The usual activity had been carried out on child exploitation to deliver on the action plan objectives. There had been a general reduction in missing children although concern remained about home schooled children. There was concern that the police did not have enough resources to search out all cases of exploitation.

There had been improvement in the child’s journey through the child protection process. This had been recognised in the recent peer review. However historic poor threshold management had led to some organisations making referrals without exploring other options and resources first. Now that the thresholds had been reinforced a fairly high proportion of referrals were not generating further action. Work was taking place to push back on organisations making inappropriate referrals. The number of children subject to a child protection plan had been higher in 2016-17 than would be expected given Herefordshire’s population and profile. A lot of work had been done by the children’s wellbeing directorate and as a result the number of children on protection plans had reduced. The number of looked after children had also been comparatively high and again work to reduce numbers was showing a positive effect.

Work on responding to child neglect had begun in 2016-17 and continued with a much sharper focus in 2017-18. It was noted that more than 50% of children on a child protection plan were due to neglect but that there was not always a consistency of reasoning in these plans. One of the difficulties of dealing with cases of neglect was that there was often no single precipitating event. The single serious case review concluded in 2016-17 had related to a family with multiple children, some of whom had disabilities, and who were of a minority ethnic background. There were concerns that abuse and neglect had not been identified or responded to as would be expected. Learning from the review had highlighted a need to do more work to understand the cultural context in such cases.

The peer review had noted some improvement in and improved understanding of early help. However the chair of the board reported there was still some way to go and the peer review had identified areas for further development. The chair of the board believe that some investment would be required in this area of work.

The conclusion of the annual report on 2016-17 was that the evidence available showed an improving trajectory in Herefordshire. The changing statutory context going forward would see the police and health services elevated to equal status partners with the council and there would be more demands on them as a consequence. The peer review had outlined areas for improvement and the priorities for 2018-19 were expected to be largely the same as in 2016-17, with some shift from child sexual exploitation to exploitation of children more generally.

Cabinet members raised a number of questions on the report. It was confirmed in response that:

·         record keeping and a lack of analytical capacity of the police and other partners was an area of concern;

·         the relaunched multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) was performing much better and delivering greater consistency;

·         recruiting and retaining good social workers was a challenge across the country, Herefordshire had done some good work on recruitment generally but it was still difficult to recruit experienced social workers;

·         the director for children’s wellbeing noted the recent positive local government peer review that highlighted a number of areas of good practice, but also that caseloads were too high in some teams at the moment, cabinet was supporting work to address this and the focus was to ensure good quality, consistent casework;

·         an Ofsted inspection should be expected within the year given that it had been some time since the previous inspection, there was no reason to believe that Herefordshire would fail an inspection but the board recognised that there were still areas for improvement;

·         partner agencies generally worked together well, there was a good level of attendance at board meetings and support for sub groups from the relevant agencies, the performance of board members was reviewed every year and part of this review was to challenge them on how they fed back into their respective agencies;

·         the chair of the board would support making attendance at training on child exploitation compulsory for taxi licence applicants both for first issue and for subsequent renewals.

Group leaders were invited to give the views of their group. There was support for the improved guidance on neglect which many councillors who were school governors were drawing on. There was also concern regarding safeguarding of children in home education. There was a request for the safeguarding board to have input to the scrutiny committee ahead of the planned task and finish group and a suggestion that the council should learn from work done by award winning authorities such as Hertfordshire.

The 2016-17 annual report of the Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board was noted.

The meeting was adjourned at 15:56 and resumed at 16:04.