Local organisations and agencies that work with children and families play a significant role when it comes to safeguarding children. To achieve the best possible outcomes, children and families should receive targeted services that meet their needs in a co-ordinated way.
Many local organisations and agencies have a duty under section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to ensure that they consider the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children when carrying out their functions.
The responsibility for this join-up locally rests with the three safeguarding partners who have a shared and equal duty to make arrangements to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in a local area and to monitor and ensure the effectiveness of those arrangements.
A safeguarding partner is defined as:
the Local Authority (LA)
a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) for an area, any part of which falls within the LA area
the Chief of Police for an area, any part of which falls within the LA area
Read more: Working Together To Safeguard Children
Under the terms of the Care Act 2014, each LA must set up a Safeguarding Adult Board (SAB), with statutory partners from the LA, Police and CCG.
A SAB has a strategic role and has three core duties; it must:
publish a strategic plan for each financial year, setting out how it will meet its main objectives. In developing the plan, it must involve the community and it must consult the local Healthwatch organisation(s)
publish an annual report detailing the activities of the SAB which it must send to the following agencies for scrutiny:
LA Chief Executives and member leads
local Health and Wellbeing Board(s)
local Police and Crime Commissioner, and
local Healthwatch organisation(s)
decide when a Safeguarding Adults Review (SAR) is necessary, arrange for its conduct and if it so decides, implement the findings. SARs are about learning lessons for the future so that practice improvements may be made