Safeguarding Children Awareness Week 8 – 14 February 2021
As part of our commitment of continuous improvement; Knowsley Safeguarding Children Partnership are hosting a Safeguarding Children Awareness Week, in partnership with colleagues from across Knowsley.
Due to current government guidelines in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Safeguarding Children Awareness Week will take place virtually. The purpose of the week is to provide an opportunity for all of our partners to celebrate and share good practice, and raise awareness of the services you provide to protect, support and safeguard children and families across Knowsley.
In 2020; Knowsley Safeguarding Children Partnership agreed the following priorities, which are set out in the KSCP Business Plan 2020 -2022;
1. Safeguarding and protecting children from domestic abuse
2. Safeguarding and protecting children from neglect
3. Safeguarding and protecting children from child exploitation
4. Safeguarding and protecting the mental wellbeing of children.
A number of key initiatives have and are taking place to achieve these priorities.
Key Learning from Multi Agency Learning Reviews
KSCP is committed to ensuring that the learning from serious case reviews and multi-agency learning reviews is disseminated to practitioners and volunteers across the borough. Lessons learnt, key themes and emerging issues that may be identified at a national level are incorporated into a comprehensive communication and training programme.
The partnership seeks your support in embracing the learning identified in the recently completed Child Sam Learning Review, this will enable us to work together to safeguard and protect children in Knowlsey.
Mental Health and Wellbeing
We have just celebrated national Child Mental Health Week, which aim is to highlight the importance of mental health with children and young people.
Restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic have raised concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of children. In response of these concerns KSCP commissioned their Young Advisors to ‘express themselves’ and create an engaging and supportive animation to promote and raise awareness of the services offered within Knowsley to support positive mental health and raise awareness of the help and support available. The following animation is aimed at children and young people (aged 10+).
First listen to Lucy; one of the KSCP Young Advisors to introduce the animation
60 Minute Briefing Child Mental Health
To support practitioners in their understanding of Child mental health, particularly the local picture, we have organised the following 60 Minute Briefing:
The Thrive System – Supporting Emotional Mental Health and Well Being in Knowsley
11th February 2021
10am – 11am
Book a place via the Booking Portal https://kscbtraining.knowsley.gov.uk
The briefing will cover
• What we know about Young Peoples Emotional Health and Wellbeing- particularly during 20/21- Covid Lockdowns
• Thrive is everyone’s business
• Young People should be supported at the most appropriate level by “the system” and given the right information to enable self-support
• The Thrive Quadrants- case studies from each quadrant
• CAMHS? – Difficult to get into?
• Children’s Eating Disorders- A Perfect Storm
• Mental Health in Schools- New Initiative
• Support available in Knowsley
• Q and A
The session will be delivered by Jan Jackson (CAMHS Manager) and Lindsey Lawrence (Operational Manager) and a representative from KOOTH.
Supporting our Voluntary and Community Sector
On the run up to our Safeguarding Children Awareness Week; over 60 volunteers and practitioners from the community and voluntary sector have attended virtual briefings to learn about their roles and responsibilities in order to equip them with the skills and knowledge required to effectively safeguard children and adults at risk.
Feedback included:
“I thought the zoom session was excellent and very informative”
“Clear, simple and to the point information. I enjoyed the interaction within the chat room, and the opportunity to discuss with others.”
“Thank you for the course today, absolutely loved it, learnt a great deal from it.”
“Always good to be reminded of professional curiosity and sometimes asking the difficult questions can lead to good outcomes”
Knowsley recognised for ‘Investing in Children’ in care
Knowsely Council’s services for children and young people in care have been recognised for inclusive practice with the Investing in Children Membership Award.
The team which delivers the services, the Safeguarding & Quality Assurance Team, had to illustrate its engagement with children and young people in care, while crucially the children and young people themselves had to demonstrate the changes their input has made.
Young people from MADE, the council’s Children in Care Council, highlighted many ways their views and ideas have led to the team making changes, including helping interview for new children’s service staff, updating the Children Looked After Charter and getting more involved in their own personal education plans (PEP).
ICON Multi Agency Evidence Based Programme
Infant crying is normal
Comforting methods can help
Its Ok to walk away
Never ever shake a baby
ICON is a multiagency evidenced based programme to reduce the incidence of Abusive Head Injury in children. The programme has been created to provide clear messages for all practitioners to support parents/carers in managing crying babies. Can you please share the ICON messages with other colleagues, expecting parents and parents/carers of new babies enabling the KSCP to ensure that this important message is cascaded across the Knowsley partnership?
Celebrating and Sharing Good Practice
Children’s Social Care
It’s really important that Children’s Social Care have consistent standards of practice, so that whichever service children are referred to they get the same quality of support.
The Practice Standards have been devised in consultation (via survey monkey and focus groups) with staff from the Social Work teams, Family First and the Youth Offending Service and also with conversations with a Parent Carer Group and a focus group with Children and Young People via MADE (Making a Difference Everywhere) and VIBE (Youth Sector). The children and young people have designed logos and had input into how they are produced (i.e. bullet point’s not long paragraphs).
The Practice Standards apply to all staff in Children’s Social Care and will be launched in March 2021.
Youth Offending Service (YOS)
Despite Covid, YOS are developing an Operation Inclusion Programme with other Merseyside Youth Offending Teams, Merseyside Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
This is a new diversion/delayed prosecution service using the new Outcome 22 option where children can avoid prosecution if they complete work with YOS. Service preparation and processes are being completed with a launch date of 1st April 2021. We have also applied for small funding bid to purchase equipment to allow us to deliver Virtual Panels to avoid commencement delays which will support engagement of children and families should lockdown restrictions continue.
MST – CAN
MultiSystemic Therapy CAN (Child Abuse and Neglect) – Since MST CAN commenced there have been significant outcomes for those families referred: Between January 2019 – December 2020 MST accepted 18 families onto the service. 17 families have successfully closed to the service, only 1 family was removed from service due to Covid-19 response (therefore not included in following data)
• 15/17 families had no new reports of maltreatment during intervention
• 16/17 parents with no new arrests during intervention
• 7/8 families referred at pre-proceedings have since been stepped out of pre-proceedings
• 6 out of those 7 families have also stepped down from Child Protection to Child In Need.
• 100% of the children have not entered the care system which equates to 42 children avoiding a care episode
• Further 9 families are still currently open, covering another 29 children.
If MST CAN was not successful and all of the 42 children moved to in-house foster care this would have had a huge impact on those children being placed into the care system and a significant cost to the authority as well. This work is supported by multi agency project board and partnership working to meet the needs of both the children and the parents in the families.
Livv Housing
More than ever families in Knowsley were facing hardship during the 2020 six weeks summer holiday. They needed support and we responded.
In partnership with One Knowsley, we used our expertise, skills, and resources to support the voluntary sector to deliver the SNAP Programme (Sport, Nutrition and Active Play). The programme provided online, outdoor, and take-home activities which helped hundreds of families and supported over 20 voluntary groups.
Livv Housing successfully:
• Delivered expertly guided Zoom sessions to help community groups navigate around Covid-19 risks and plan activities safely.
• Secured £12,000 of funding for food and slow cookers for families
• Donated and delivered 1,250 activity bags to children containing a range of games from Jenga, frisbees, bats and balls, colouring books and more.
This fantastic initiative protected the mental wellbeing of children at an incredibly difficult time.
We’re supporting families in poverty this winter, our winter scheme has been set up to support our customers and their families who are experiencing poverty during the pandemic and need extra help towards heating, water, and food bills. These vital funds are keeping vulnerable children fed and warm during these most challenging of times, helping to protect their physical and mental wellbeing.
We have expert teams working with families across the Borough where children and young people are affected by Adverse Childhood Experiences or are becoming involved with (or at risk of) crime, gangs, or criminal exploitation. We’ve set up a Young People’s Fund to help us provide a bespoke offer when working with families, so we can make appropriate interventions to reduce harm, incidents of crime and anti-social behaviour. It helps us connect young people with a range of positive experiences to improve their mental and physical wellbeing or improve their education and skills, such as joining a sports club or access counselling.
These experiences create further opportunities and help us build trusted relationships with our vulnerable customers. Most importantly though it is helping us to improve the aspirations, wellbeing, education, and skills of young people in Knowsley.
North West Boroughs Healthcare
Knowsley North West Boroughs Healthcare have demonstrated how they have made recent adaptions to their service and shared good practise during the Covid restrictions. These have highlighted effective partnership working, how effective support can benefit families, how professionals worked together to support front-line practitioners with safeguarding concerns and how they have supported victim survivors of Domestic Abuse.
Merseyside Police
The East Police Vulnerable Persons Unit (PVPU) have led with a number of initiatives:
The Child Exploitation team are currently running an operation targeting modern slavery across the area.
PVPU assist with MATAC (Multi Agency Tasking and Coordination) that targets perpetrators of Domestic abuse and work with partner agencies to educate offenders and provide support to families. As part of the safeguarding plan we have had a DVEC (Domestic Violence Enforcement Campaign) car which is designated to police officers that respond to Domestic incidents providing a bespoke service, with a view to capturing best evidence.
PVPU – Evidence led prosecutions, staff are training response officers and partners in relation to identifying and capturing best evidence to support evidence led prosecution, training packages delivered to all uniformed staff.
PVPU- recovery support service: this service is provided to victims of DA who are reluctant to support a prosecution and or later retract complaints, working with partners PVPU staff visits victims and provides a bespoke care package providing reassurance and support, Staff also work with Victim care and facilitate court familiarisation and if needed transport to court. This has been very effective and resulted in a number of positive outcomes.
Operation Encompass – as a result of this going electronic, there was a gap identified in relation to what support should be provided to children who have witnessed Domestic Abuse. recent training has been provided to teachers on how to recognise Domestic abuse and the impact of ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experiences)
