Agenda item

14.1     The Independent Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children’s Parentship presented the Annual Report to the Committee. The Chair outlined that the report showed the partnership work between East Sussex County Council, Sussex Police and the NHS, in East Sussex to safeguard children and stated that the report provided assurance about the good work taking place. The Chair noted the strong culture of support, learning and challenge across the Partnership, as well as the exceptional senior leadership team in Children’s Services.

14.2     The Chair outlined key findings from the report and highlighted the key priorities of the Board, including safeguarding in education, child exploitation, embedding a learning culture and safeguarding under-fives.

14.3     The Chair informed the Board about upcoming legislation changes, with the possibility that Education could become a fourth strategic partner.

14.4     The Sussex Police Exploitation Manager provided an update to the Committee on the recruitment of an exploitation team as requested by the Committee last year. The Committee heard that this new team was responding to all forms of exploitation, including child exploitation, and noted the good engagement at a partnership level, including with the new restructured Safer Panel.

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

·         Whole family support and wider information sharing - The Committee asked about wider support offered to families when a child is identified as a victim of crimes such as domestic abuse and sought assurance that adults involved were referred to other agencies. In response the Chair noted that there was a good system in place to work with the whole family and share information between professionals and although the police would deal with certain investigations, they were aware of the wider impact of crimes on families and the community. He also noted the preventative measures in place, including Early Help and social workers to prevent incidents; current work included working with ‘invisible’ or ‘unseen’ men to engage fathers with safeguarding issues to reduce incidents with very young children. The Committee asked about the number of fathers who had harmed their child (compared with other men in the family); the Head of Children's Safeguards & Quality Assurance replied that in a sample study conducted by the National Safeguarding Children Panel, the perpetrator was the biological father of the child in most cases.

·         Young People in custody – The Committee asked for more information on young people in the youth justice system, including those held in overnight police custody. The Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children’s Parentship told the Board that there was a Youth Justice Report which explored these figures in more detail.

·         Mental Health – The Committee were concerned about the number of children needing mental health support. The Director of Children’s Services said that information published by the provider trust SPFT showed an increase in the number of children being seen, but also a steep increase in referrals. She noted, too, that there was also a high non-attendance rate for appointments which CAMHS were working on reducing through reminders and working with partners to support attendance. The Director noted the high self-harm rate in East Sussex compared with statistical neighbours. 

·         Transition – The Committee sought clarification on when support is offered to children who are transitioning into adult services. In response, the Director of Children’s Services clarified the difference between disabled children transitioning to adult services, which is planned from an early age, and” transitional safeguarding support” which is the term for safeguarding support provided for supporting vulnerable young people over the age of 18, who may not have received support when they were younger.

·         Education– The Committee asked about the impact and risk from potential legislative changes to make Education a strategic partner in the group. In response the Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children’s Parentship said a significant challenge with this was how wide ranging education is, including nursery settings, so it would be vital to get the right people to represent education within the Partnership. The Director of Children’s Services noted the current good engagement with schools across the county with safeguarding issues. The Chair also commented that the Partnership did engage with the voluntary sector on after school provision but noted this provision was not as established as it used to be. The Committee also enquired about the number of children being educated at home and if this was identified in wider statistics on children not attending school and if it was indicative of national statistics. The Director of Children’s Services responded to say that the number of children who were “Electively Home Educated” (EHE) had risen since the pandemic, in line with a national trend.  Although some families may be doing this well, there were concerns for some children around safeguarding and the quality of education they were receiving. The DFE has said that the Government are looking for opportunities to legislate to create a compulsory EHE register; this was a proposal which was part of the Schools Bill which the Government had withdrawn.

14.6     The Head of Children's Safeguards & Quality Assurance commented that the report was comprehensive and recognised the range of multi-agency safeguarding work in place. The Department were aware of the challenges going forward but were reassured that across the agencies there was a culture of challenge and learning and wanting to achieve best outcomes.

14.7     Committee thanked the Chair of the East Sussex Safeguarding Children’s Parentship and noted they were reassured by the good partnership work taking place and RESOLVED to note the report.