Agenda item

Chris Spencer (Independent Chair of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board) will present the Annual Report of the LSCB to the committee.

The Annual Report of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) for 2012/13 was introduced to the committee by Chris Spencer (Independent Chair of the LSCB), who had joined the Board in May 2012. Shortly after this time, the Board had been restructured, creating an Executive group. A new constitution had also been developed and the Board’s three year business  plan had been revised and agreed by LSCB partners in September 2012. Five sub-groups had been created, each Chaired by members of the Executive group, all of which had been fully operational as of January 2013. The Annual Report 2012/13 reviewed the progress made against year 1 of the business plan, assessing the Board’s priorities as addressed via the sub-groups. The five sub-groups comprised Quality Audit and Outcomes, Vulnerable Groups, the Voice of the Child, Developing a Learning Culture, and Governance, Accountability and Business Processes. Terms of reference and support plans had been established for each of these. Chris Spencer emphasised that though the changes made had allowed significant progress to be achieved, there remained lots of work to do over the next few years.

During members’ discussion, a number of issues and queries were raised. With reference to the Voice of the Child sub group, which had been set up to ensure that views of children and young people informed the Board in considering safeguarding, it was queried whether any young people sat on the Board.  Further details were also sought on attendance at  the LSCB meetings by various partners and it was specifically queried whether poor attendance by some organisations had hindered the progress of the Board. It was noted that the covering report stated that there were no child poverty implications and it was requested that this be revised to highlight some of the key issues.

Chris Spencer explained that there were no children on the LSCB but that there was a stated intention to establish a shadow board which children would attend. It was considered that as the meetings of the LSCB were rather technical it would not be an appropriate form of engagement to have children attend these. The Brent Youth Parliament were, however, currently involved with the Voice of the Child sub group. A key aim was to engage some of the vulnerable and hard to reach groups. One potential means of achieving this would be to utilise, train and possibly employ via the young apprenticeship scheme, young people who were or who had been part of the desired demographic. The most important aspect to good engagement would be demonstrating that the Board had listened to and used the views of young people in developing and improving practice. It was considered that the Board would play an important co-ordinating role around services for vulnerable groups to obtain better outcomes.

Further commenting on the role of the LSCB, Chris Spencer explained that the Board also undertook audit work to ensure that the services provided by its constituent organisations were underpinned by safe practice and acted to minimise risk. An audit report reviewing the outcome of this work would be submitted to the Board. With regard to the impact of poor attendance on the work of the LSCB, the committee was advised that some partners had a statutory duty to attend meetings whilst others attended on a voluntary basis. It was not expected that representatives from very specialised services would attend unless there was a relevant item being considered. Certainly, however, the attendance and turnover of the individual representatives of some of the key partners such as Health and the Police, had been negatively affected by the multitude of changes happening in their respective sectors. As Chair of the LSCB, Chris Spencer explained that he did have the power to issue a formal challenge to some statutory partners for poor attendance.

Responding to the query on the child poverty implications of the report, Chris Spencer highlighted that comment could be made by an officer of the council on the relevant links between the work of the LSCB and other key strategies.

RESOLVED:

    (i)        that the Annual Report of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board for 2012/13 be noted

  (ii)        that a report setting out the findings of the audit work of the LSCB be submitted to the committee in due course.

 (iii)        That the child poverty implications of the report be submitted to the next meeting of the committee.