1. Preface and Introduction |
Contents
Preface
London's children should all be able to grow up in circumstances where they are safe and supported, so that they can achieve their optimal outcomes throughout childhood, their teenage years and into adulthood.
To achieve this, agencies need to work together to promote children's welfare and prevent them from suffering harm. Children who are being or who are likely to be harmed are safeguarded best when safeguarding procedures are consistent across London.
These London Child Protection Procedures are commissioned by the London Safeguarding Children Board on behalf of the Association of London Directors of Children's Services, the Metropolitan Police Service, NHS London, the London area of the National Offender Management Service, the NSPCC and London's voluntary and community child care services sector.
This is the 3rd edition of the procedures. Changes to the previous edition reflect extensive consultation with children's services across London, to address relevant areas of practice and new legislation, service standards and government guidance. The procedures have also been updated on the basis of the latest research and practice-based evidence for securing the best possible outcomes for children and their families.
Purpose of the procedures and who should read them
These London Child Protection Procedures set out how agencies and individuals should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Their target audience is professionals (including unqualified staff and volunteers) and front-line managers who have particular responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and senior and operational managers, in:
- Agencies which are responsible for commissioning or providing services to children and their families and to adults who are parents;
- Agencies which have a particular responsibility for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.
Proposals for additions or amendments to this edition of the London Child Protection Procedures should be directed to the London Safeguarding Children Board at 591/2 Southwark Street, London SE1 0EL; London Safeguarding Children Board website
Acknowledgements
The London Safeguarding Children Board would like to thank all the individuals and statutory and non-statutory agencies who have contributed their expertise and time to make this edition of the London Child Protection Procedures possible.
Introduction
|
|
||
| 1.1.1 | This third edition of the London Child Protection Procedures sets out the procedures which all London agencies, groups and individuals must follow in identifying, raising and responding to welfare concerns when coming into contact with or receiving information about children 0 to 17 years, including unborn children and adolescents up to their 18th birthday. This may be through:
|
||
| 1.1.2 | This third edition of the London Child Protection Procedures incorporates the Government guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children (DfES, 2006).
Working Together (DfES, 2006) reflects the Government's Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, which is designed to support front-line professionals, planners, commissioners, senior management and leaders in all agencies to achieve the best outcomes for children. That is, for every child to:
|
||
| 1.1.3 | These procedures are concerned with the 'staying safe' outcome, and reflect the Government's strategy of strengthening the framework for single and multi-agency safeguarding practice. | ||
| 1.1.4 | This third edition of the London Child Protection Procedures draws on the supplementary guidance Safeguarding Children Involved in Prostitution (DH, 2000), Safeguarding Children in Whom Illness is Fabricated or Induced (DH, 2002) and Safeguarding Children from Abuse Linked to a Belief in Spirit Possession (DfES, 2006), which have now become supplements to Working Together to Safeguard Children (DfES, 2006) | ||
|
|||
| 1.1.5 | Shortcomings when working to safeguard and promote children's welfare were brought into the spotlight once again with the death of Victoria Climbié and the subsequent inquiry. The inquiry revealed themes identified by past inquiries which resulted in a failure to intervene early enough. These included:
Poor co-ordination; a failure to share information; the absence of anyone with a strong sense of accountability; and frontline workers trying to cope with staff vacancies, poor management and a lack of effective training (cm 5860 p.5). |
||
|
|||
| 1.1.6 | The way to proceed in the face of uncertainty is through competent professional judgments based on a sound assessment of the child's needs, the parents' capacity to respond to those needs - including their capacity to keep the child safe from significant harm - and the wider family circumstances. | ||
| 1.1.7 | Effective measures to safeguard children are those which also promote their welfare. They should not be seen in isolation from the wider range of support and services already provided and available to meet the needs of children and families:
|
||
|
|||
| 1.1.8 | Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children - and in particular protecting them from significant harm - depends upon effective joint working between agencies and professionals that have different roles and expertise. | ||
| 1.1.9 | Individual children, especially some of the most vulnerable children and those at greatest risk of social exclusion, will need coordinated help from health, education, children's social care, and quite possibly the voluntary sector and other agencies, including youth justice services. | ||
|
|||
| 1.1.10 | In order to achieve this joint working there need to be constructive relationships between individual workers, promoted and supported by:
|
||
| 1.1.11 | For those children who are suffering or at risk of suffering significant harm, or causing or at risk of causing physical or sexual harm to others, joint working is essential, to safeguard and promote welfare of the child/ren and, where necessary, to help bring to justice the perpetrators of crimes against children. All agencies and professionals should:
|
||
|
|||
| 1.1.12 | The above elements, and others from the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, are supported by the five documents:
For more information, see the Every Child Matters, Change for Children website. |
||
| 1.1.13 | These should be read together with Standard Five: Safeguarding and Promoting the Welfare of Children in the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services (DH, 2004)
The full Children’s NSF is available at the Department of Health website. |
||
|
|
|
| 1.2.1 | Effective support systems form a key component of the Government's strategy for integrated front-line working to safeguard children. The strategy includes a core set of systems and activities to be adopted by local authorities and their partner agencies: | |
|
||
| 1.2.2 | ContactPoint, a record of all children (aged up to 18) in England, will be made available to all local authorities in England during 2008 and will contain the following basic information:
|
|
| 1.2.3 | There will also be a facility for professionals to indicate that they have information to share, are currently taking action or have undertaken an assessment in relation to the child. No assessment or case information will be held on ContactPoint. | |
| 1.2.4 | The consent of the child or their parent/s will be required to record professionals' details for some targeted and specialist health services, and access to this information will be restricted to certain categories of users.
Authorised professionals in children's services, including education, health, social care, youth offending and some non-statutory voluntary services will be eligible for access to ContactPoint. |
|
| 1.2.5 | ContactPoint will support the delivery of the integrated processes of the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme, such as the Common Assessment Framework (see section 1.2.16. Common Assessment Framework), lead professional (see section 1.6. Glossary), and extended schools (see section 2.10.20. Extended schools) and help identify missing children (see section 5.27. Missing from care and home). | |
|
||
| 1.2.6 | The Integrated Children's System is the national IT system for LA children's social care to record and manage children's cases, using an e-social care record to file information from referral, assessment, planning, intervention, review and closure, for each child. The system builds on the Looking After Children materials [Looking After Children materials: assessment and action records (DH 1995), introduced in order to provide local authorities with a systematic means of gathering relevant information about children looked after away from home.] and the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health et al., 2000) (see section 6. Referral and assessment). | |
| 1.2.7 | The Integrated Children's System assists the collection, analysis, retrieval and reporting of information on individual cases. It is also a management information tool for planning, commissioning and reviewing children's services. It generates the information for children's social care core information requirements. For more information, see the Every Child Matters - Change for children website. | |
| 1.2.8 | Implementation of the Integrated Children's System commenced on 1st January 2007. All local authorities and LA children's social care professionals have a responsibility to ensure timely and smooth implementation of the system. | |
|
||
| 1.2.9 | The role of lead professionals can be undertaken by any front-line professional working with children who have additional (including complex) needs and require an integrated package of support from more than one practitioner. The lead professional's role is to:
|
|
| 1.2.10 | The lead professional is accountable to their own agency for their delivery of lead professional functions. They are not responsible for the actions of other professionals. | |
| 1.2.11 | The role of lead professional can be taken on by any professional within the children's workforce, subject to them having the skills, experience and line management (or equivalent) support to fulfil lead professional functions. | |
| 1.2.12 | Lead professionals need the knowledge, competence and confidence to:
|
|
|
||
| 1.2.13 | The Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health et al., 2000) (the Assessment Framework) provides a systematic multi-agency approach to analyse and record what is happening to a child within their family and the wider context of the community in which they live. See section 6.3. The Assessment Framework and appendix 5 for a summary and diagram of the Assessment Framework. | |
| 1.2.14 | The assessment stages involve gathering and analysing information about the three domains of the Assessment Framework, these are the:
|
|
| 1.2.15 | Staff in all agencies should be competent in contributing to the assessment of a child using the Assessment Framework. | |
|
||
| 1.2.16 | The Common Assessment Framework is a nationally standardised approach to conducting an assessment of the needs of a child and deciding how they should be met. It is a simple assessment checklist for use by all professionals in all agencies to clarify concerns they may have about a child and communicate and work more effectively together. | |
| 1.2.17 | Whenever a professional in any agency becomes concerned that a child may have needs which are not being met by universal services (e.g. education and health services), the professional should complete a common assessment to help them form a judgment about whether their concern is valid. | |
| 1.2.18 | The common assessment should not delay the process where a professional is concerned that a child is, or may be, at risk of significant harm. In such cases the professional must make a referral directly to LA children's social care using the appropriate inter-agency referral form, in line with section 6. Referral and assessment. | |
| 1.2.19 | The appropriate inter-agency form should also be used to make a referral to specialist services (e.g. LA children with disabilities teams, child and adolescent mental health services, special educational needs services etc.). | |
| 1.2.20 | The completed common assessment should be used as a basis for single and multi-agency or multi-disciplinary discussion and decision-making. The outcomes of such discussions may be that:
|
|
| 1.2.21 | The Common Assessment Framework is based on the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (DH, 2000), this means that specialist assessments can easily build on the information gathered by a common assessment. | |
| 1.2.22 | Local authorities and their partner agencies should work towards implementing the common assessment in electronic format (e-CAF, see section 1.6. Glossary) as soon as possible. | |
|
|
|
|
||
| 1.3.1 | Children's trusts bring together all services for children in an area, underpinned by the Children Act 2004 duty to cooperate, to focus on improving outcomes for all children. | |
| 1.3.2 | They will support those who work every day with children, young people and their families to deliver better outcomes, with children experiencing more integrated and responsive services, and specialist support embedded in and accessed through universal services. | |
| 1.3.3 | People will work in effective multi-disciplinary teams, be trained jointly to tackle cultural and professional divides, use a lead professional model where many disciplines are involved, and be co-located, often in extended schools or children's centres. | |
| 1.3.4 | Children's trusts will be supported by integrated processes. Some processes, like the Common Assessment Framework, will be centrally driven, whereas others will be specified at a local level. | |
| 1.3.5 | While integrated delivery can be fostered in many ways, and at many levels, making sure the system overall is meeting the right needs for the right children requires effective integrated strategies:
|
|
| 1.3.6 | This joint commissioning, underpinned by pooled resources, will ensure that those best able to provide the right packages of services can do so. | |
| 1.3.7 | All of this requires arrangements for governance that ensure everyone shares the vision and give each the confidence to relinquish day-to-day control of decisions and resources, while maintaining the necessary high-level accountability for meeting their statutory duties in a new way. | |
| 1.3.8 | Across the whole system there are some unifying features which help to link the various elements:
|
|
|
||
| 1.3.9 | Local strategic partners have a duty to identify children's welfare as a priority in their 'business' or 'service' plans. Promoting children's welfare must also be a key priority area in their strategic Children and Young People's Plan, outlining comprehensive and coordinated children's services designed to meet the needs of all children and families living in their area. | |
| 1.3.10 | The Children and Young People's Plan is a single, strategic, overarching plan for all services affecting children in the local area. It should support more integrated and effective services to secure the outcomes for children, as set out in the Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme. | |
| 1.3.11 | The plan should provide an accurate and comprehensive assessment of current outcomes for children and identify where these outcomes can be improved, and how and when these improvements will be achieved. | |
| 1.3.12 | The Children and Young People's Plan and the process of joint planning should support local authorities and their partners as they work together. Local authorities will take the lead to:
|
|
|
|
|
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child |
||
| 1.4.1 | These procedures reflect the principles contained within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the UK Government in 1991. It also takes into account the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular articles 6 and 8. All agencies should promote awareness, within the community and among professionals, of children's rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (in particular article 19 - the right to be protected from harm) through public education campaigns and training and supervision for staff all levels within the organisation. The methods used to communicate with the public should be sensitive to the cultures and languages of local community. | |
|
||
| 1.4.2 | Agency structures and systems and the actions of professionals working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children should reflect an approach which is:
|
|
|
|
|
| 1.5.1 | This document sets out procedures which all London agencies, groups and individuals must follow in identifying, raising and responding to welfare concerns when coming into contact with or receiving information about children. This may be through:
|
|
| 1.5.2 | The London agencies include:
|
|
| 1.5.3 | These procedures are supported by a number of supplementary procedures, which should be read as extensions of this document:
|
|
| 1.5.4 | Other, locally developed, single and multi-agency procedures and protocols must be consistent with these London Child Protection Procedures and endorsed by the relevant Local Safeguarding Children Board/s. | |
| 1.5.5 | Professionals in all organisations can access these London Safeguarding Children Procedures in electronic form from the London Safeguarding Children Board's website. | |
| Term | Definition |
| Abuse and neglect | Forms of maltreatment of a child. |
| Accommodated under s20 | Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 enabling a local authority to provide accommodation for a child who has no person with parental responsibility for him/her, is lost or abandoned or whose parent cannot provide suitable accommodation and care. |
| ASSET | A youth justice assessment tool comprising a main assessment, a serious harm risk assessment and a young person's self-assessment. It is used to assist in planning interventions and review progress and outcomes. |
| Care order | A court order under s.31 of the Children Act 1989 placing a child in local authority care to protect the child from harm they are suffering or may suffer, whilst under the care of his/her parent (and/or being beyond a parent's control). |
| Child | Children 0 to 17 years and adolescents up to their 18th birthday. |
| Child in need | Section 17 (10) of the Children Act 1989 defines a child in need as a child who, without the provision of local authority services:
|
| Child protection | The process of protecting individual children identified as either suffering, or at risk of suffering, significant harm as a result of abuse or neglect. |
| Child protection enquiry | Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 gives LA children's social care a duty to make enquiries to decide whether they should take action to safeguard or promote the welfare of a child who is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. |
| Children perceived as 'different' | Research and anecdotal evidence indicates that children who may be perceived as 'different', e.g. disabled children, children from minority ethnic groups or cultures and children with differing sexual orientations, are more vulnerable to abuse. It is therefore vital that all agencies promote equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice. Failure to do so may expose particular children to significant harm. |
| Common Assessment Framework (CAF) | The CAF is a standardised approach to conducting an assessment of a child's additional needs and deciding how those needs should be met. It can be used by practitioners across children's services in England. The CAF is intended to provide a simple process for a holistic assessment of a child's needs and strengths, taking account of the role of parents, carers and environmental factors on their development.
All local authority areas are expected to implement the CAF between April 2006 and the end of 2008. |
| Designated person for unexpected child deaths | Professional nominated by the chair of the Local Safeguarding Children Board to whom the death notification and other data on each unexpected child death should be sent. |
| Duty children's social worker | Professional from the LA children's social care team which receives and responds to all child concern referrals - in office hours. |
| e-CAF | An IT system to enable common assessment information to be shared securely with other agencies London-wide. |
| Emergency duty team | LA children's social care team which receives and responds to all child concern referrals - outside office hours. |
| Emergency protection order | A court order under s44 of the Children Act 1989 giving LA children's social care and the police the power to protect a child from harm by removing the child to suitable accommodation or preventing a child from being removed (e.g. from hospital). |
| First line manager | The manager with responsibility for supervising the frontline professional with case or immediate responsibility for the child, adult or family. |
| Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families | The Assessment Framework is a systematic way for professionals to assess a child's needs and whether s/he is suffering or likely to suffer significant harm, what actions must be taken and which services would best meet the needs of the child and family. All professionals should be competent to contribute to an assessment, which is usually led by LA children's social care under the Children Act 1989. |
| Gillick competence | Reference added 10.01.2008. The competency test resided by Lord Fraser, 1985 (known as Gillick Competence), which laid down criteria for establishing whether a child, irrespective of age, had the capacity to provide valid consent to treatment (by health professionals) in specified circumstances. See section 3.3.15, Seeking consent to share information. |
| Impairment of health and development | Where professionals are seeking to judge whether a child's health and development have been significantly harmed, the Children Act 1989 (s31 (10)) directs them to make a comparison with the health and development which could reasonably be expected of a similar child. |
| Interim care order | A court order under s38 of the Children Act 1989 where, during the proceedings of a care order, the court adjourns, and [usually] the court directs an investigation into the child's circumstances. |
| Key worker | The key worker has an important role that involves administration, information, co-ordination and the professional management of a case. Their prime responsibility is to maintain a child protection focus to the work being undertaken with families and to maintain and co-ordinate the core group, who will ensure the progress of the child protection plan. |
| Local authorities (LA) | In this guidance this generally means local authorities that are children's services authorities - effectively, a London borough council responsible for social services and education. |
| LA children's social care | The work of local authorities exercising their social services functions with regard to children. This is not meant to imply a separate 'children's social services' department. |
| LA child protection adviser | The LA social care officer who provides off-line advice, oversees the cases of children subject to child protection plans and / or chairs of child protection conferences. |
| LA social worker or child's social worker | Social care qualified professional with case responsibility. |
| Lead professional | The practitioner who has the most ongoing contact with a child at the time and who is in a position to co-ordinate the professional network to support the child. |
| Nominated safeguarding children adviser | The person in each agency who has responsibility for child protection issues in that agency and provides child protection advice to frontline professionals / clinicians, e.g. child protection lead in schools, designated and named doctors and nurses etc. |
| Onset | A youth justice prevention tool for implementation in 2007. It assists in identifying risk factors to be reduced and protective factors to be enhanced, to support a choice of preventative interventions for young people. |
| Parent | Parent or carer. |
| Powers of Police protection | Section 46 of the Children Act 1989 giving the police powers to protect a child from harm by removing the child to suitable accommodation or preventing a child from being removed (e.g. from hospital). |
| Professional | Any individual working in a voluntary, employed, professional or unqualified capacity, including foster carers and approved adopters. |
| Risk to children | Description of an adult or child who has been identified (by probation services / Youth Offending Teams, police or health services, individually or via the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements) as posing an ongoing risk to a child (replaces the term Schedule 1 Offender). |
| Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children | The process of:
|
| Senior manager | Manager in any agency above first line manager. |
| Should and must | These terms are used interchangeably in the procedures. |
| Significant harm | There are no absolute criteria on which to rely when judging what constitutes significant harm. Consideration of the severity of ill-treatment may include the degree and the extent of physical harm, the duration and frequency of abuse and neglect, the extent of premeditation, and the presence or degree of threat, coercion, sadism, and bizarre or unusual elements. Each of these elements has been associated with more severe effects on the child, and / or relatively greater difficulty in helping the child overcome the adverse impact of the maltreatment. Sometimes, a single traumatic event may constitute significant harm (e.g. a violent assault, suffocation or poisoning). More often, significant harm is a compilation of significant events, both acute and long-standing, which interrupt, change or damage the child's physical and psychological development. Some children live in family and social circumstances where their health and development are neglected. For them, it is the corrosiveness of long-term emotional, physical or sexual abuse that causes impairment to the extent of constituting significant harm. In each case, it is necessary to consider any maltreatment alongside the family's strengths and supports. |
| Staff / staff member | Any individual/s working in a voluntary, employed, professional or unqualified capacity, including foster carers and approved adopters. |
| Supervising social worker | LA or private and voluntary sector social worker supporting foster carers (also known as link or family placement worker or fostering officer). |
| Well-being | The achievement of the best outcomes for children. That is, for every child to:
|
| Working day | Timescales in these procedures relate to the working day i.e. from 09.00hrs to 17.00hrs on Monday to Friday, unless otherwise expressed (e.g. 24 hours). |
|
|
|
Definitions |
||
| 1.7.1 | Government issued national guidance, such as Working Together to Safeguard Children 2006, interprets UK law and legislation for agencies and services, such as local authorities, the police, health or other services, in a particular area of service delivery. | |
| 1.7.2 | Local authorities, the police, health or other services develop policies which describe the agency or service's strategy in a particular area of service delivery or organisation; policies may be aspirational. | |
| 1.7.3 | Procedures describe what staff must do in particular circumstances and to an extent how they must do it; procedures define the limits of professional discretion. Failure to follow procedure may be a disciplinary offence. When something goes wrong, if staff have followed procedure they will usually be deemed to have acted appropriately. | |
| 1.7.4 | Protocols set out agreements between different agencies or parts of the same agency, about particular issues; protocols describe what each agency can expect of the other/s. Protocols have the same status as procedures, that is, failure to follow protocol may be a disciplinary offence. | |
| 1.7.5 | Guidance gives staff practical and / or theoretical advice on the best way of approaching an issue or carrying out an activity. | |
End