Issue - meetings

Report by the Independent Chair.

27.1     The Board considered a report on the East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership (ESSCP) Annual Report for 2021-2022, which focuses on partnership learning, impact, evidence and assurance.

27.2     The Chair commented that it was re-assuring that all the systems are working well and thanked the Independent Chair for a clear and easy to read report. There were no questions raised by the Board on the report.

27.3     The Board RESOLVED to note the East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership Annual Report for 2021-2022.

17.1     The Independent Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children Partnership introduced himself and the report, which the Independent Chair reminded the Committee was a report covering the work of the multi-agency Partnership, rather than solely the safeguarding work of ESCC. The Independent Chair noted that the Committee had requested that this report cover learning for East Sussex from the national reviews into the deaths of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson and the Independent Chair assured the Committee that the Partnership had carefully considered the messages from the National Panel’s report. The Independent Chair had written to all the strategic leads for safeguarding in the Partnership to ask what steps they were taking to respond to the recommendations in the national reviews and he had been re-assured by the responses received, with a number of actions taking place, including a mock-Joint Targeted Area Inspection.

17.2     The Independent Chair highlighted that the Partnership had conducted eight multi-agency rapid reviews of cases of child serious injuries or deaths and four of those had resulted in a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review in 2021/22. The Independent Chair added that the East Sussex system and all strategic leads were very open to learning from those reviews. The Independent Chair also highlighted a range of key developments and achievements within the report and concluded by commenting that the ESSCP was one of the best safeguarding partnership he had seen in his time working in safeguarding, with really strong leaders in all agencies who all agreed that safeguarding was key.

17.3     The Committee asked questions and made comments on the following areas:

·                     Sufficiency of resourcing for safeguarding – a question was asked on whether there was sufficient resource to carry out the work that safeguarding partners felt was needed to address issues identified by the ESSCP. The Independent Chair responded that while they felt there was not enough resource to do all that the ESSCP would want to, and they would always be supportive of more investment in safeguarding, the resources the partnership and its members did have were extremely well managed and effective. The Director of Children’s Services added that while they would also always support opportunities to invest in children’s services and safeguarding work, even if more funding was to become available it would be challenging to recruit more children’s social workers at this time. The Director felt that the service had just about enough resource for what it needed to deliver but noted that caseloads of social workers were the highest they had been, with some social workers responsible for 23-25 cases as opposed to the 16-18 cases that were aimed for. All cases were managed very carefully. The Director added that the proposals to implement a Family Safeguarding Model through RPPR involved recruiting 36 additional workers to deliver adult support which was a significant investment but was expected to deliver savings in the longer-term by keeping children out of care wherever safe and possible.

·                     Child exploitation in work – a question  ...  view the full minutes text for item 17