How does a group of people from a range of agencies sitting round a table and called the Safeguarding Children Board actually make children safer? Here's my report on what we discussed when we met last week.
We want young people to feel safe and be confident that adults they come into contact with know what to do to keep them safe. We discussed a number of things that will improve the help they can get from nurses, childcare staff, doctors, social workers, youth workers, teachers and Police officers.
Firstly, we want all of the above groups of people to be able to get the best possible training to help them protect children and young people. To do this we are working jointly with safeguarding children partnerships in Walsall, Dudley and Sandwell to ensure we all provide training to the same high standard and that we can also increase the amount of training we offer across the Black Country. We agreed at our meeting last week that we should get involved and fully support this development, and we are already writing our first joint training brochure.
We want to have better information for people in Wolverhampton and particularly about keeping safe. Our new website on Safeguarding is the start of that. There is loads of information for children, young people, parents, carers, the general public, and community and voluntary groups as well as staff in all our partner agencies. Please tell us what you think of the website and and what other information you would like to see on there.
Every three months we get a report about the information we collect which tells us how well we are doing at protecting children and young people from abuse and neglect. Discussion the story this information gives tells us what's going well and more importantly where we need to improve. This time we learnt we:
- need to do more to involve family doctors in sharing what they know about people who might be at risk
- need to help professionals make the link between domestic violence and the impact it has on children
- want to know more from the Council about how well it is doing in assisting children in need of care and support
- want to know more about how the Police, NHS and the Council are working together to decide how and when to get involved when they receive information about concerns about child care.
I will report back on the replies I receive next time.
The other main issue we discussed was a Serious Case Review about a baby who died which will be published on the 21st March. I will comment on this on the website on that date. At this point all I would say is that any child death is a tragedy, and one that was not an accident is particularly hard to understand or accept. However painful we find it, we need to find out what happened and what we could do to reduce the chance of such a tragedy happening again.
I welcome any responses and in particular any thoughts on the information we provide. email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Alan Coe - Independent Chairperson of Wolverhampton Safeguarding Children Board