7.1 Guiding Principles

The focus of the Child Protection Conference is to bring together and analyse, in an inter-agency setting, all relevant information and plan how best to safeguard and promote the welfare of the child. It is the responsibility of the conference to make recommendations on how organisations and agencies work together to safeguard the child(ren) and any siblings in future.

A request to convene a Child Protection Conference may be made by a senior staff member of any of the member agencies and should be made and responded to in writing to either a Service Manager or a Child Protection Adviser.

Each Safeguarding Partnership has their own threshold criteria to support decision making around the level of risk. These can be read  here 1.5 Thresholds | Sussex Child Protection and Safeguarding Procedures Manual

All agencies must make reasonable efforts to ensure that staff involved in child protection work are committed to and achieve:

• Sharing of information;
• Careful preparation for conferences, including the provision of reports;
• Attendance at conferences;
• Contribution to decision making;
• Delivery of actions that are planned to safeguard the child(ren).

All those participating in Conferences, either directly or through the provision of written information should clearly distinguish between fact, observation, allegation and opinion.