Agenda item

To consider the annual report and ensure the key activity within the Corporate Plan of maintaining a focus on children’s safeguarding practice to ensure a high quality of service with effective systems to protect children and keep them safe.

The Strategic Partnerships Manager was in attendance to present the report. The reporting period of the report was from April 2019 to March 2020. The report highlighted that safeguarding arrangements on the Isle of Wight continued to improve and there were many areas within child protection with positive progress with strong and integrated front-line services.

The business plan in the report outlines three strategic priorities:

·         To further embed and evaluate Isle of Wight Safeguarding Partnership initiative.

·         To strengthen assurance programmes

·         Leadership and transformation

There are key themes running through the three priority areas:

·         The voice and lived experience of the child

·         Multi-agency partnership working

·         Lessons learned from case reviews and multi-agency audits

The key successes to date:

·         The Isle of Wight Safeguarding Children’s Partnership with local safeguarding Hampshire / Southampton / Portsmouth partnerships launched the Family Approach protocol and toolkit

·         6 multi-agency workshops were held across the Isle of Wight to introduce the protocol and toolkit in 2019 and 2020

·         The Isle of Wight Safeguarding Children’s Partnership with local safeguarding Hampshire / Southampton / Portsmouth partnerships set up the icon project in order to reduce abusive head trauma in babies and this is now a national project

·         The Isle of Wight Safeguarding Children’s Partnership supported the development and launch of the every sleep counts campaign at the safeguarding partnerships event

Current work in progress:

·         The evaluation of Icon and Every Sleep Counts campaign will be undertaken in 2021

·         The Isle of Wight Safeguarding Children’s Partnership in collaboration with Hampshire / Southampton / Portsmouth local safeguarding partnerships in supporting their Lurking Trolls online safety campaign. The Lurking Troll campaign will be rolled out to schools in 2021.

·         The revised neglect strategy and toolkit is also due to be launched in February 2021

It was concluded that the Annual Report provides evidence Safeguarding remains a firm priority for all partner agencies across the Isle of Wight and has been demonstrated by consistently good levels of attendance and effective engagement in sub-groups and a strong culture of constructive challenging debate.

Questions were invited from members. A member asked if in future the report could be brought to an earlier committee as they felt it was important if there were to be any issues identified that it be bought to members attention as soon as possible. The director of Children’s Services explained that the report requires a lot of data and it takes time to be analysed therefore the report could not be brought to the committee before September. A member asked why all staff are not utilising the toolkit available as the data in the report shows? The Head of Strategy and Operations explained that the strategy is being revised and more resource has been added to the improvement of the toolkit guided by a survey done showing the toolkit not being used in practise. It was highlighted that the toolkit received 17,000 hits online and the feedback has been positive and said to have improved practise in identifying neglect. A member showed concern regarding the figures showing that 28% of children do not feel safe in school which is 3,000 children. The Director for Children Services explained that each time children are asked why they do not feel safe in school the answer is always bullying. It was asked what can be done to reduce these numbers? and has COVID-19 made it worse? The Director for Children Services suggested that there is always more to be done around bullying but is a very broad topic so suggested that it is brought back to committee to be looked at in more detail. The chairman noted this suggestion and agreed for it to be brought back to be explored in more detail.