Agenda item

To consider the Children’s Safeguarding Assurance Partnership Annual Report.

Mr Stephen Ashley, Independent Scrutineer for Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool and Lancashire Children’s Safeguarding Assurance Partnership (CSAP) attended the Committee meeting to present the CSAP Annual Report, explaining that the report covered the period of time from CSAP’s inception on 29 September 2019 to 30 September 2020. Mr Ashley advised that an interim report would be produced at the end of the year and that future annual reports would cover either January to December or April to March.

The Committee was informed of the three priority areas identified by CSAP as being contextual safeguarding, neglect and domestic abuse and the annual report focused on the work undertaken by the partnership over the year in relation to these areas. Mr Ashley highlighted how the impact of Covid-19 had affected the working environment around these priorities and noted that the full repercussions of the periods of lockdown on Blackpool’s children were not yet fully understood.

With regards to the data on the rates of hospital admissions for mental health conditions, the Committee queried why Blackpool’s rates were considerably higher than both the rest of Lancashire and the country. Mr Ashley reported that a response document in relation to mental health had been requested from the Clinical Commissioning Group and he agreed to circulate additional findings to Committee Members once available.

Ms Jeanette Richards, Interim Director of Children’s Services described a number of tools which had been introduced to assist with the early identification of neglect. In relation to domestic abuse, Ms Richards reported that improvements had been made to staff training around the use of risk assessments to identify domestic abuse and the need to establish safety plans around both the victims of domestic abuse and also any children and young people in the household. She agreed to present a more detailed overview of the work in this area to a future meeting of the Committee.

Further details of Operation Encompass were requested, with Ms Richards explaining that it was a national initiative which had been adopted across Lancashire and which allowed the police to share information with a child’s school in respect of any incidences of domestic abuse which had occurred in the child’s household prior to the start of the next school day in order to ensure that the child’s school was fully aware of their experiences.

With respect to the protection of women, the Committee asked Ms Richards if she felt that the Council was suitably proactive in lobbying government to drive the protection of women. Ms Richards described the issue as having two components: the protection of women in their own homes from domestic abuse and the wider issue of protecting women in the community. In relation to domestic abuse, she reported that education around appropriate relationships had been added to the curriculum in schools which would assist in raising awareness of the risks of negative relationships. With regards to improving safety within the community for all women, she reported that the Council gave a consistently strong message of zero tolerance of harassment and threats to women.

The Committee extended its thanks to Mr Ashley for the work undertaken by CSAP and the presentation of the partnership’s annual report.

The Committee agreed:

1.      To receive further data on Blackpool’s mental health hospital admission rates from Mr Ashley once available;

2.      To request that further work on the Council’s response to domestic abuse be brought to a future meeting of the Committee.