The 2012 London Safeguarding Children Awards opened for entries on Monday 16 April.  Now into their second year, these awards celebrate some of the excellent work taking place to keep children in London safe from harm.  The awards showcase and celebrate good and promising practice in safeguarding and child protection, as well as promoting shared learning between colleagues and agencies.  They aim to highlight innovative ideas and good practice to improve the safeguarding of children in the capital.

Local authorities, health workers and the police are being encouraged to nominate examples of their work, including projects with other agencies and charities.

The closing date for entries is Friday 29 June 2012, and the entry form and guidance notes can be found at http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/policylobbying/children/safeguardingchildren/lsgcawards12.htm.

Co-sponsored by the Social Care Institite for Excellence (SCIE), an expert judging panel of national child protection specialists will evaluate the entries, with the overall London Safeguarding Children Award supplemented by a separate prize for the most promising example of emerging good practice. The winners will be announced and presented with their awards at the London Safeguarding Children Board’s annual conference on Monday 10 December.

Rolling out Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) in London 

MASH co-locates safeguarding agencies and their data into a secure assessment, research, and referral unit for notifications of vulnerable children. By providing a fire walled facility, the aim is for each partner to exercise the tension between privacy and sharing information for safety. This will identify unknown risk by building up a full picture on the child of concern and their family, and is seen as a key tool in building stronger partnership work to identify vulnerable children at an early stage.

A number of pilots are already underway in London, and the first hubs went live in Haringey and Harrow in February 2012. A further six local authority areas are currently on target for implementation over the next six months and several areas have already expressed an interest in joining the next tranche for roll out in 2012/13.

To assist with further implementation towards the proposed end date of Autumn 2013, the London Board has established a web page to share the latest guidance and good practice emerging from the project - see www.londonscb.gov.uk/mash/ for details.

Safeguarding children across culture and faith

The London Board held a free half day conference on the afternoon of Tuesday 3 April 2012, to launch the final report of the Pan London Safeguarding Children Minority Ethnic Culture and Faith Project and share some of the learning from the LSCBs funded to roll out local initiatives. The report and presentations from the day are now available to download via the links below:

  Final report of the pan-London Safeguarding Children Culture and Faith Project (10mb)
  Presentation - the Barnet Experience
  Presentation - the Brent Experience
  Presentation - the Greenwich Experience
  Presentation - the Newham Experience
  Presentation - the Sutton Experience
Conference programme

Safeguarding children at London 2012

A subgroup of the London Safeguarding Children Board has been considering the child protection implications of London hosting the 2012 Games, and has now agreed a co-ordinated process for dealing with referrals received from within the Olympic Security Zone.

Responsibility for the initial response to these referrals will be shared between the four boroughs bordering the Olympic Park (Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest) and ALDCS has signed off a protocol to ensure swift transfer of case responsibility to the child’s home authority. Responsibility for children with no identified home authority, or those from outside London who cannot be returned home within 24 hours, will be allocated across London local authorities via a rota system similar to the current asylum dispersal process operating through Lunar House.

To support further development of this work, the four Park boroughs and the London Safeguarding Children Board have agreed to jointly commission a part time project manager from April 2012. The Project Manager will work on the finer details of the work for two days per week until the end of the Games, with the London Safeguarding Children Board retaining overall strategic responsibility.

Training

Members of the London Board’s Safe Games for Children training subgroup, led by Bernadette Boland (Ealing LSCB) and made up of eight London LSCB training co-ordinators and volunteers from the Met Police, NSPCC, the Red Cross and Children and Families Across Borders (formerly International Social Services UK) have also now developed a comprehensive safeguarding training pack for volunteers. The training pack is a valuable resource to assist trainers when training managers, mentors and volunteers who will be working during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We hope the pack will be used creatively, not only in preparation for the Games but as a resource in general safeguarding training.

A number of Train the Trainer sessions have been held in  London over the past months and two final sessions are arranged to take place on June 8th ( 9.30am-12.30pm amd 1.30pm-4.3-0pm ) at the Redcross Headquarters, Moorgate . Please contact Bernadette on bolandb@ealing.gov.uk if you wish to attend.

Assessing the impact of the pan-London Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention and Recovery Programmes 

Barnardos and the London Safeguarding Children Board held a joint event on 2 February 2012  to launch the evaluation and learning from a 5 year program of work funded by London Councils and the Metropolitan Police, featuring speakers from across the children’s workforce involved with safeguarding exploited children.

All presentations and related papers from the event can be found online at:  http://www.londonscb.gov.uk/sexual_abuse/

Safeguarding London's Children Awards 2011 



The London Family, Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) and a project to reduce violence in families are joint winners of the first London Safeguarding Children Award (above). 

The FDAC was set up by Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the children’s charity Coram. It is commissioned and part-funded by Camden, Islington, Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham councils, and aims to improve the outcomes of children whose parents misuse drugs or alcohol. The first of its kind in England and Wales, the FDACmotivates and encourages parents to tackle drug or alcohol misuse in cases where a local authority has issued care proceedings.

The other joint winner is the Non-Violent Resistance Project, which seeks to reduce violence in families by addressing destructive behaviour in children and adolescents. The Oxleas NHS Foundation Mental Health Trust in Bexley and Greenwich runs project through a series of parenting groups, which help parents and carers to overcome feelings of helplessness through support networks in and outside the home.

The accompanying Emerging Practice prize was won by Enfield's Parent Engagement Panels and Parent Champions, who work with mums and dads in the Congolese community to encourage them to get involved in decisions about the services in their area (below).

The winners were announced and presented with their awards at the London Safeguarding Children Board’s annual conference on 5 December. To find out more about the Award and each of the eight shortlisted projects, please follow the links below:

  London Safeguarding Children Award 2011 - shortlisted projects
  London Safeguarding Children Award 2011 - press release

Safeguarding children across culture and faith: new tools for London

On Monday 5 December, the London Safeguarding Children Board launched three new documents to help LSCBs promote a step-change in safeguarding London’s children living in minority ethnic, cultural or faith communities or groups, working together with local minority ethnic communities and faith groups and the frontline professionals who work with them.

The Pan London Safeguarding Children Minority Ethnic Culture and Faith Project 2010-2011 was an 18 month action-research project, which comprised three parts:

1. Project work with minority ethnic, culture or faith communities / groups by 11 London LSCBs;
2. Focus groups in London LSCBs to gather views on how to improve safeguarding for London’s children living in minority ethnic groups and communities;
3. Interviews with London LSCBs, mapping activity and aspiration for stronger partnership work to safeguard children living in minority ethnic, culture or faith communities or groups.

The project had four primary outputs, which are available to download via the links below:

  London C&F LSCB Strategy
To assist Local Safeguarding Children Boards to develop sound, effective and sustainable partnership working with local groups, communities and third sector agencies;

  London C&F Training Toolkit
To ensure that professionals and voluntary groups have access to a wide range of resources, materials and background information to help them develop and design appropriate and sensitive training packages in relation to child protection in its broadest sense;

  London C&F Practice Guidance
To assist clear insight and effective action to protect and promote the welfare of children living in circumstances which appear to be complex because their faith, culture, nationality and possibly recent history differs significantly from that of host nation children and families;
 
  Final project report
Drawing together learning from each of the individual LSCB projects, focus groups and interviews.