Borough praised for at-risk children care

Safeguarding is 'overall effective' – report

A joint inspection by three safeguarding bodies has praised systems for protecting children in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

This follows an inspection from Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), evaluating the multi-agency safeguarding partners in the borough.

This includes the council, medical services and the police.

The report concludes the safeguarding partnership in the borough is overall ‘effective’.

“This strong partnership works well to help and protect children,” the report states.

“It demonstrates care and

compassion and a sustained approach to striving to deliver good services.

“The partnership has a clear understanding of its strengths and areas for improvement.”

There is, however, inconsistency in the quality of referral information provided.

“In a minority of cases, the information from health and other providers contains insufficient information relating to children’s circumstances or the level of concern about them,” the inspectors wrote.

In addition, not all services obtain consent before submitting a referral, meaning families are unaware that such a referral has been made.

The outcome of safeguarding decisions is also not ‘consistently shared’ with partners, which means they are not always aware of what actions have been taken to protect children.

The report also concluded that families benefit from a clear early help offer which ensures that they have access to a range of support services. However, ‘not all intervention is sufficiently timely’.

Early help plans ‘appropriately include’ parents and carers. Their views are ‘clearly articulated’ and children’s needs are ‘helpfully identified’.

However, in some cases, families wait too long for an allocated worker.

Responses to children at risk of harm are ‘timely and effective’ – but one criticism is that the routinely-attending public health nurses are ‘not necessarily the most appropriate health professionals to inform effective decisionmaking’.

“The full range of health partners supporting a child are not represented and those attending do not have all the relevant health information needed,” inspectors wrote.

Strategy meetings mostly identify relevant actions to safeguard children; however, action plans did not consistently articulate time scales for their completion.

“This limits the capacity to hold professionals in the partnership to account for their actions,” said the report.

Another area requiring improvement is ‘the quality of the response’ and consistency from the emergency duty service for requests for support for children out of hours.

This is ‘not always subject to due diligence’, the inspectorate found.

Despite these criticisms, the bodies’ evaluation of the partnership was generally positive.

Children affected by domestic abuse ‘receive a timely service response’ and reports of any missing children were responded to ‘effectively and quickly’.

Most children in need of assessment and protection ‘are visited promptly by social workers’.

There is also ‘clear commitment across the partnership to workforce training’ and ‘a willingness to learn from previous practice and processes’.