March 2017
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This seminar brought together key stakeholders from across the education and health sectors, as well as policymakers in local government and elsewhere, to consider latest thinking on priorities for the safeguarding of children. It followed the National Audit Office (NAO) report into the delivery of child protection services finding that efforts since 2010 to improve child protection services have not yet translated into improved services.
Delegates also discussed the implementation of the key recommendations of the Wood Report, published in March 2016, which reviewed the role and functions of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and will be implemented by Government, such as requiring each area to publish a plan detailing how multi-agency arrangements will be improved as well as the abolition of Serious Case Reviews and introduction of a national learning framework for inquiries.
They also considered next steps for preventing and investigating instances of child sexual abuse - and supporting the victims - in light of work being carried out in the area by the Office for the Children’s Commissioner and as the government considers responses to its consultation into the possible introduction of mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect.
Further sessions assessed steps to reform the social work profession in light of measures included in the Children and Social Work Bill, currently progressing through Parliament, and the government’s response to the Education Select Committee’s recent inquiry into this area, which recommended that the government focuses on retention issues and abandons its plans to introduce a new regulator for the profession. Delegates also reflected on the impact to date of attempts to increase graduate recruitment such as Frontline, in light of government plans to significantly increase funding for new routes into social work.
