Agenda item

Briefing Note of the Director Children and Education.

The Board considered a briefing note and presentation of the Director of Children and Education which provided an update on the Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership (CSCP) yearly report in relation to activity of the CSCP April 2024-2025.

Officers explained how Working Together 2023 stated, ’Safeguarding Partners must jointly report on the activity they had undertaken in a 12-month period. That reporting should be transparent and easily accessible to the families and professionals. The focus of these reports should be on multi agency priorities, learning, impact, evidence and improvement.’ The report was published and can be found attached at Appendix 1 of the document pack.

The CSCP had 3 priorities for 2024-25, which would be the same priorities for 2025-2026:

·  Neglect

·  Exploration

·  Making the system work

Officers highlighted a series of key successes of the programme:

• Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership had a robust response to the (at the time) new requirements under Working Together 2023 including the Lead Safeguarding Partners, the Independent Scrutineer and the engagement of Education.
• Quality assurance activity showed improved recognition and response to neglect.
• The response to children affected by serious youth violence and exploitation identified as strong in the Joint Targeted Area inspection continued to improve.
• Early help in Coventry was strong, and this supported the identification of children requiring support at the earliest opportunity.
• Over 2500 practitioners had attended Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership training, webinars and learning events at time of publishing
• The Safeguarding Together Action Group (STAG) was then made up of 210 frontline practitioners across 100 agencies and continued to grow, ensuring that key messages got to the frontline.
• The partnership was committed to making Coventry a place where children and young people felt valued, supported and able to enjoy themselves and this was delivered through the Child Friendly Cov initiative.
• ‘Your Voice Matters’ the young people’s group supported children and young people to have a voice. Work had been undertaken to ensure that their views were acted upon.
• Coventry Safeguarding Children’s Partnership continued to be much more responsive to emerging issues rather than sticking to a planned programme of work. An example of this was the audit in relation to the Working Together 2023 health check.

In considering the briefing note and presentation, the Board questioned officers, received responses, and discussed matters as summarised below:

• Concerns that Electronic Patient Record issues were being used as a reason for health partners not, as the initial rollout was two years ago which gave ample time to learn, were likely not the case, as there seemed to be genuine technical issues that were being worked on with this year’s new rollout.
• There was varied practice from frontline police officers, but this was being addressed by the use of the Aware app and in most cases police actions were appropriate.
• Efforts were made to avoid children being sent into to the criminal justice system over minor infractions and that although a response was in progress, this was impacted by changes of senior management in the West Midlands Police.
• A consistent key concern has been a lack of professional curiosity but was now being specifically targeted in training by senior officers which had seen good attendance.
• That although there were often persistent and ongoing difficulties finding enough midwives on the national level, Coventry currently had sufficient midwives and did not expect to experience issues with recruitment.
• That a representative from the police is required to attend the joint safeguarding meetings for them to be quorate.
• That school’s use self-assessment to report on their safeguarding but can request support from Council officers and Safeguarding is part of the Ofsted framework.

Members requested that the following actions be taken and information be circulated to them:

• A date be scheduled for an item on Youth Justice at SCRUCO.
• Officers to liaise with co-opted member G Vohra to consider the reintroduction of Faith Forums.
• A presentation given at all members seminar concerning SEND be circulated to the Board.

The Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Board (2) Resolved to note the contents of the briefing note and report and had no further recommendations for the Cabinet Member.