Report of the Strategic Director of Children and Education Services

This report provides an update to the report and presentation to the Committee on 5 February 2019, which outlined the proposals to respond to the statutory guidance contained in Chapter 4, Working Together 2018 Improving Child Protection and Safeguarding Practice for children and young people.  This report details the progress since February 2019, the new arrangements and plans to continue this work. 

The Committee received a report of the Strategic Director of Children and Education Services which provided an update to the report and presentation to the Committee on 5 February 2019, which had outlined the proposals to respond to the statutory guidance contained in Chapter 4, Working Together 2018 Improving Child Protection and Safeguarding Practice for Children and Young People. It detailed the progress since February 2019, the new arrangements and plans to continue this work.

Officers referred to the main points and themes within the report which included:

• Describing the legislative requirement for change;
• Describing the Manchester Safeguarding Partnership’s vision;
• Describing the key activities and events since February 2019;
• Information on the Manchester Safeguarding Partnership structure;
• Information on the various established subgroups and their remits;
• An update on business planning;
• Moving forward; and
• Review of new arrangements. 

A Member informed the Committee about the recent visit to the Complex Safeguarding Hub, which some Committee Members had attended.  She reported that Members had been impressed with the way it was working as a multi-agency team and the level of information staff had been able to provide in response to Members’ questions.  She welcomed the work taking place to disrupt activity relating to the exploitation of young people and to support the prosecution of perpetrators.  She also highlighted the innovative work of the Achieving Change Together programme, which enabled young people to develop strategies to safely remain in their own communities.

Other points that arose from the Committee’s discussions included:

• How well the Liquid Logic case management and reporting system was working in practice; and
• How young people who went missing from home were dealt with.

The Strategic Lead (Complex Safeguarding) outlined how the Achieving Change Together programme worked and highlighted some of its key principles, including enabling a young person to develop one trusted relationship with a member of staff, understanding all elements of the young person’s life and enabling the young people to see that they could set and achieve goals.  She advised Members that her service was assessing the impact of the programme.

The Deputy Director of Children’s Services assured Members that the issues which had arisen with the transition to Liquid Logic were all ones which had been anticipated and planned for. 

The Strategic Head of Early Help reported that having a co-located team at the Complex Safeguarding Hub of police officers, social workers and voluntary and community sector (VCS) partners facilitated the response to young people who went missing from home.  The Strategic Lead (Complex Safeguarding) informed Members about work to update the Greater Manchester Missing From Home guidance, including consideration of the definitions of absent and missing.  She advised the Committee that this included consideration of the appropriate processes for 16 and 17 year olds in the care of the local authority who were going off to spend time with their family where the family were not considered to currently present a high risk to them.  Detective Chief Inspector Eales from GMP outlined how GMP dealt with missing from home reports, including risk assessing each case, having officers allocated to dealing with missing from home cases and working with partners to understand why that young person might have gone missing and how the case could be quickly progressed.  He advised Members that high risk cases would be reviewed by a Detective Inspector and hourly reviews would be carried out to ensure that everything was being done to ensure the young person was found and safely returned. 

The Executive Member for Children and Schools informed Members about the feedback from the two peer reviews of the Complex Safeguarding Hub, highlighting the positive feedback on GMP’s role.  He welcomed that the Committee had regularly scrutinised the work of the Complex Safeguarding Hub and suggested that it would be useful for them to continue to do so.

Decision

To recognise the progress that continues to be made in respect of the Complex Safeguarding Hub and the response to Child Sexual Exploitation and for the 2019/20 annual Complex Safeguarding Report to have an emphasis on quality of practice and impact.