Agenda item - ANNUAL REVIEW OF SAFEGUARDING CHILDREN AND ADULTS AT RISK (2018-19)

REPORT OF THE COMMUNITY HEALTH AND WELLBEING TEAM LEADER

A review of safeguarding children and adults at risk activity across NHDC from April 2018 - March 2019.

RESOLVED: That the Overview and Scrutiny Committee:

(1) Received and commented on the annual report of progress made against the Council’s fulfilment of the statutory duty to maintain an effective safeguarding function with regard to children;

(2) Received and commented on the annual report of progress made against the Council’s fulfilment of the statutory duty to maintain an effective safeguarding function with regard to adults at risk;

(3) Agreed that sufficient and robust processes are in place at NHDC for application and review of safeguarding processes and that an annual review and presentation to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee should continue, be agreed; and

(4) Expressed their disappointment with the apparent disproportionately small number of elected Members who had undertaken safeguarding training and requested that Members were investigated into who had received safeguarding training from other sources. All Members are made aware, once again, of the ability to complete e-learning training and that all relevant group leaders, port folio holders and shadow port-folio holders raise the issue of training requirement at their group meetings.

REASON FOR DECISION:

The resolution is the best course of action that can be accommodated within the approved budget and officer resources, that will fulfil our statutory and lawful obligations but also ensure that a regular, corporate review exists.

The meeting adjourned for a short comfort break at 8.35pm.

Audio Recording – Start of Item – 44 Minutes 12 Seconds

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader introduced the Annual Review of Safeguarding Children and Adults at Risk. Before she drew Members attention to aspects of the Safeguarding activity 2018/19, the Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader explained, for the benefit of new Members of The Overview and Scrutiny Committee, some background to everything they did with respect to safeguarding children and adults at risk, what they did and why they did it in order to give assurance to Members that the service that was provided was excellent. She explained the following:

· There was a legal duty to safeguard both children and adults at risk.

· The duty to safeguard children was set down in the Children Act 2004.

· The duty to safeguard adults was brought in much more recently, in The Care Act 2014.

· Adults referred to were those with care and support needs.

· The statutory function as a district council was purely to refer and information share concerns to the relevant agency for necessary action.

· Due to being in a two tier authority system the duty to investigate was held with Hertfordshire County Council, however NHDC had a duty under law to refer any concerns.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader explained and provided Members with statistical information in respect of the different concern types and communicated the volume of referrals provided within the report.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader informed Members that when dealing with the safeguarding of children, no referral consent was required. The law stipulated that, where there were concerns about the welfare of a child, a referral was required irrespective of whether or not family members were in agreement.

With respect to the safeguarding of adults, referral consent was required, unless the adult was deemed to lack mental capacity to make the decision or where, indeed, the abuse would likely affect other people and would be in the wider interest of the safety of others.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader further explained that Domestic Abuse referrals were also required which she informed were ranked on a scoring system and provided statistics from both the Hertfordshire Independent Domestic Violence Advisor, (IDVA) and the Hertfordshire Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) system.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader explained the context of “threshold” to the Members and reported that a number of cases whereby concerns had been logged, but had not been referred due to the threshold not being met. She informed that because all concerns were now logged in a central database, her team were able to cross reference new concerns and make a referral if and when the threshold was reached.

Referrals had steadily risen over the last 5 years, however, the Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader felt that this was mainly due to the centralisation of records for the first time, corporate awareness, awareness raising campaigns that had resulted in an increased confidence among officers of how to recognise and refer.

Data from the Adults Board showed that North Hertfordshire at the end of 2018/19 ranked 4^th out of the ten District and Borough Councils in Hertfordshire with Stevenage ranking first, with 105 adult safeguarding concerns reported per 10,000 population.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader highlighted Appendix A of the report that provided Members with some of the Actions that had been completed in the last year and outlined the work planned for April 2019 to March 2020.

A safeguarding e-survey had been undertaken to ascertain staff knowledge. Results showed that, of those who had completed the survey, 95% were aware of who to report any safeguarding concern and how to obtain relevant information. The successful result of the survey had gained NHDC a first place ‘best response’ out of all of the District and Borough Councils in Hertfordshire.

Councillor Kate Aspinwall complimented the Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader’s report and thanked her and her team for all of their hard work.

The following Members asked questions and made comment:

Councillor Kate Aspinwall;

Councillor Terry Hone;

Councillor David Levett; and

Councillor Gerald Morris

In response to questions, the Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader confirmed:

· Member Training protocol was currently being examined to ascertain knowledge, requirement and at what level.

· Comprehensive knowledge of the safeguarding of adults was now a fundamental requirement.

· Dates and times of all courses which were held for staff were published in Members Information Services, (MIS) and any Member wishing to attend would be most welcome.

· In terms of Learning and Development, safeguarding training was organised within their team rather than organised centrally, owing to individual specific specialist requirement.

· Regular contact was kept with the Children’s Partnership with whom they met quarterly. The Children’s Partnership would provide an end of year statistical presentation.

The Community Health and Wellbeing Team Leader informed Members, depending on the level of training required, of the estimated length of time each level of Safeguarding Training would take. She confirmed that e-learning could be found on Grow Zone, the corporate learning and development platform.

It was suggested by a Member that the e-learning link be sent out to all Members as a reminder to undertake training.

RESOLVED:

That the Overview and Scrutiny Committee: