a)     

‘Working Together’ was the statutory guidance which outlined what areas had to do in respect of safeguarding children. Within the Partnership there had been three statutory leads; Devon and Cornwall Police, ICB and the Local Authority and they were required to produce arrangements for safeguarding taking into account local and national contexts. This in turn would lead to other partners across the city working together to keep our children safe;

b)     

Plymouth had a very committed leadership and membership to safeguarding with good representation at leadership, managerial and practitioner levels. There had also been good representation of a range of different groups in the City;

c)     

The work plan for the partnership focussed on neglect, child sexual harm, being trauma informed and getting the right support at the right time and place;

d)     

The Partnership had introduced a new quality assurance framework and quality assurance work plan for the year;

a)        

The strategy and its effectiveness had been incorporated in the Partnerships own data set and Sharon Muldoon had been driving this across the strategic partnership but with a focus on the key proxy indicators such as the number of children on CP plans or subject to re-referrals. Behind the plan would be a number of audits taken at key points throughout the year with the first one looking at child sexual harm that would identify what the current practice looked like and the outcomes of those children;

b)       

The Scorecard had included more areas to best advise the Partnership how well the system had been working;

c)        

Partners in the city would have their own internal training programmes for staff. There had been a document entitled ‘keeping children safe in education’ which was refreshed annually and then cascaded through all schools. Safeguarding training would be carried out within schools at the start of each year. Multi-agency training had been provided by the Partnership concentrated on those operating in a more specialist area having involvement within Child Protection conference or Team around the child/family meetings. There were also more specialist training for neglect, child sexual abuse or domestic abuse amongst others;

d)       

John Clements would explore as to whether an invitation had been sent to faith groups in the city to join the Partnership and report back to the Committee;

e)       

Officers would look into a mechanism to report the work of the Partnership more widely for members of Plymouth City Council.

f)         

The Committee requested John Clements of the Plymouth Safeguarding Partnership to come back to the last scrutiny of the municipal year to report on how the plan of the Partnership is working and whether John could be accompanied by the young safeguarders to talk to the Committee about what they do.