2.1 Safeguarding Children Partnership

A safeguarding partner in relation to a local authority area in England is defined under the Children Act 2004,  as amended by the Children and Social Work Act, 2017 as: (a) the local authority (b) an Integrated Care Board for an area any part of which falls within the local authority area (c) the chief officer of police for an area any part of which falls within the local authority area.

The three safeguarding partners for Brighton & Hove, East Sussex and West Sussex each agree  ways to co-ordinate their safeguarding services; act as a strategic leadership group in supporting and engaging others; and implement local and national learning including from serious child safeguarding incidents. It is also expected local education and childcare partners be included in strategic decision making because of the pivotal role they play in children’s daily lives and amount of time they spend with them.

For more detailed information, please refer to Chapter 2 Working together to safeguard children 2023: statutory guidance (publishing.service.gov.uk) 

For specific arrangements in each Safeguarding Partnership, please see the following websites, which will include the published arrangements and Annual Reports:

• Brighton & Hove
• East Sussex
• West Sussex

The purpose of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements is to ensure that, at a local level, organisations and agencies are clear about how they will work together to safeguard children and promote their welfare. This means:

• there is a clear, shared vision for how to improve outcomes for children locally across all levels of need and all types of harm
• when a child is identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm there is a prompt, appropriate and effective response to ensure the protection and support of the child
• organisations and agencies are challenged appropriately, effectively holding one another to account
• the voice of children and families combined with the knowledge of experienced practitioners and insights from data, provides a greater understanding of the areas of strength and/or improvement within arrangements and practice
• information is sought, analysed, shared, and broken down by protected characteristics to facilitate more accurate and timely decision-making for children and families, and to understand outcomes for different communities of children
• effective collection, sharing and analysis of data, enables early identification of new safeguarding risks, issues, emerging threats, and joined-up responses across relevant agencies
• senior leaders promote and embed a learning culture which supports local services to become more reflective and implement changes to practice
• senior leaders have a good knowledge and understanding about the quality of local practice and its impact on children and families

To work together effectively, the Lead Safeguarding Partners, along with other local organisations and agencies, should develop processes that;

• works together to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in the local area

• includes and develops the role of wider local organisations and agencies in the safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in the local area.

Safeguarding partners must ensure that there are arrangements for effective independent scrutiny in place for their local area. Functions of the independent scrutiny role include:

• Provide safeguarding partners and relevant agencies with independent, rigorous, and effective support and challenge at both a strategic and operational level.
• Provide assurance to the whole system in judging the effectiveness of the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements through a range of scrutiny methods.
• Ensure that statutory duties are being fulfilled, quality assurance mechanisms are in place, and that local child safeguarding practice reviews and national reviews are analysed, with key learning areas identified and effectively implemented across the safeguarding system.
• Ensure that the voice of children and families is considered as part of scrutiny and that this is at the heart of arrangements through direct feedback, informing policy and practice.
• Be regarded as a ‘critical friend’ and provide opportunities for two-way discussion and reflection between frontline practitioners and leaders. This will encourage and enable strong, clear, strategic leadership.
• Provide independent advice when there are disagreements between agencies and safeguarding partners and facilitate escalation procedures.
• Evaluate and contribute to multi-agency safeguarding published arrangements and the annual report, alongside feeding into the wider accountability systems such as inspections

Across Sussex the Lead Safeguarding Partners have equal and joint responsibility for local safeguarding arrangements. Should the lead representatives delegate their functions they remain accountable for any actions or decisions taken on behalf of their agency. Lead Safeguarding Partners in Sussex have identified Delegated Safeguarding Partners who are senior officers in their agency who have responsibility and authority for ensuring full participation with these arrangements.

For more detailed information on membership and the functions of the Lead and Delegated Safeguarding Partners, please refer to chapter 2 Working together to safeguard children 2023: statutory guidance (publishing.service.gov.uk)

Safeguarding Partners should include any local or national relevant agencies in partnership arrangements. Relevant agencies are those organisations and agencies whose involvement the safeguarding partners consider are required to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. Lead Safeguarding Partners should set out in their published arrangements which organisations and agencies they require to work with them as relevant agencies.

A list of relevant agencies is set out in The Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018   

Relevant agencies must act in accordance with local safeguarding arrangements. As part of this, the organisation should:

• have a clear understanding of its responsibilities in relation to safeguarding children locally, and how it will discharge them
• co-operate with safeguarding partners to improve, implement, and monitor effectiveness of the local safeguarding arrangements
• share information and data about safeguarding issues and concerns affecting the children involved in their organisation to contribute to local priorities
• ensure local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements are fully understood, and rigorously applied within their organisation.

To be effective, safeguarding partnership arrangements should link to other strategic partnership work happening locally to support children and families. This will include other public boards including Health and wellbeing boards, Adult Safeguarding Boards, Channel Panels, Improvement Boards, Community Safety Partnerships, the Local Family Justice Board and MAPPAs, and, where relevant, Violence Reduction Units.

Safeguarding partners must jointly report on the activity they have undertaken in a 12-month period[1]. That reporting should be transparent and easily accessible to families and professionals. The focus of these reports should be on multi-agency priorities, learning, impact, evidence, and improvement. Reports must include:

• what partnerships have done as a result of the arrangements, including on child safeguarding practice reviews
• how effective these arrangements have been in practice.

In addition, the report should also include:

• the contribution of each safeguarding partner to the functioning and structure of the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
• any themes emanating from aggregated methods of scrutiny, for example, reviews and scrutineer activity and multi-agency audits
• evidence of the impact of the work of the safeguarding partners and relevant agencies, including training, on outcomes for children and families • an analysis of any areas where there has been little or no evidence of progress on agreed priorities
• an analysis of learning from serious incidents
• a record of key decisions and actions taken by the safeguarding partners in the yearly cycle, including in relation to implementing the recommendations from any local and national child safeguarding practice reviews and the impact this has had
• ways in which the safeguarding partners have sought and utilised feedback from children and families to inform their work and influence service provision
• the breakdown of costs in delivering the arrangements for that period, including the financial contributions of individual partners, any changes to funding and an assessment of the impact and value for money of this funding
• evidence of how safeguarding partners are ensuring the adequate representation and input of education at both the operational and strategic levels of the arrangements
• an overview of how data is being used to encourage learning within the arrangements and evidence of how information sharing has improved practice and outcomes
• a review of the impact and learning from independent scrutiny arrangements to ensure the leadership is strong and the arrangements are leading to the desired and necessary impact
• any updates to the published arrangement with the proposed timescale for implementation
• evidence that national reforms have been implemented, taking into account key decisions and actions taken by safeguarding partners in response to reforms, and any issues or concerns encountered within the yearly cycle.

Where there is a secure establishment in a local area, safeguarding partners should include a review of the use of restraint within that establishment in their report, and the findings of the review should be reported to the Youth Justice Board, the Youth Custody Service, and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons.

Safeguarding partners should make sure the report is widely available. A copy should be sent to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (Mailbox.NationalReviewPanel@education.gov.uk) who will review it to identify any issues that may need escalation to a national level and Foundations (What Works Centre for Children and Families) (policy@foundations.org.uk), given its focus on learning within 7 days of publication. To allow for consistency across local areas, these should be submitted and published by the end of September every year, starting from 2024, and should be reflective of work undertaken the previous financial year (April to March). If partners fail to submit the yearly report this may be escalated to the Secretary of State.

[1] Children Act 2004 Section 16G