Wakefield & District Safeguarding Children Board Winter / Spring Edition 2018 Newsletter

Inside this issue Learning from near misses & tragedies Learning from near 2 in Under 5’s in Wakefield misses & tragedies in Under 5’s in Wakefield Wakefield’s Safeguarding Children Board held a Continued well-attended multi-agency conference on 13th February 2019. The focus of this event was the Safeguarding Children & 2 Protecting Professionals learning from recent serious case reviews and in Early Year Settings, learnt lessons reviews involving under 5’s in Online Safety Wakefield. 76 Delegates attended from agencies Considerations. across the district Wakefield Early Help 3

Summit “Talk to Action” The conference was opened by Edwina Harrison (Independent Chair of Wakefield Safeguarding Children Board). Sharon Harvey, (Bradford District Early Help Local 4 Conversation Care NHS Foundation Trust) then gave an overview of each case that was to be focused on throughout the morning; this included a story board Smoking New Year 4 incorporating the key learning from each case. Information Network 4 Register (IN) (Formerly Kristy Lindley (Safeguarding Police) Known as the Disabled followed this with an informative presentation on Children’s Register) the police response to sudden unexplained death in Safeguarding & Review 5 childhood (SUDIC). Unit has Moved Early Help Register 5 Alison Dinsdale, (Bradford District Care NHS Anti-Bullying Week 12- 6 Foundation Trust) gave a presentation on supporting parents to cope with 16th November 2018 crying babies and prevention of non-accidental injuries, this included a short Schools Contribution DVD from the NSPCC ‘Coping with Crying’. Health Visitors will show this to all What is the MOMO 6 new parents during antenatal appointments. Challenge

Karron Zelei (Wakefield Safeguarding Children Board, Multi-Agency Training The Role of the Local 7 Authority Designated Coordinator) followed this with a presentation on ‘Working with the Invisible Officer in Wakefield. Man’. There was an acknowledgement that there is evidence to suggest that practitioners (usually women) do not always engage with men and that they WDSCB Twitter Account 7 usually focus on the woman/mother, it was identified that this practice needs Newsletter Feedback 7 to change and fathers must be included.

The participants responded positively to the two questions they were asked to consider in the workshop.

Independent Chair WakefieldLearning from Early near Help misses Summit & tragedies“Talk to Action” in Under 5’s in Wakefield Continued What will you do differently following today’s event? What do you need to be able to do things differently?

Bev Paris, (Service Manager, Safeguarding and Quality Standards) presented about Social Cares involvement with the children and families. Bev discussed the ways Social Care have strengthened processes to improve outcomes in response to the learning.

Edwina Harrison summarised he morning and brought the event to a close. Feedback received was very positive, below is a sample of this:

‘Many thanks for an informative morning’

‘Really useful forum exploring the deeper elements of working together inclusively’

‘Very well delivered and informative, all practitioners should receive this training’ ‘Informative session, which will inform my practice’

Storyboards from the event can be located on the WDSCB website here. Thank you to the partners that presented at the event, and for sharing their skills and knowledge with other services/organisation within Wakefield.

Safeguarding children and protecting professionals in early years settings: online safety considerations

This document is to help managers of early years settings (including wrap around care for the early years age group) ensure their online safeguarding practice is in line with statutory requirements and best practice.

With internet enabled devices being a part of everyday life for children, early years settings (birth to 5 years old) provide a vital foundation for online safety education in today’s digital age.

To support early years settings, the UKCIS Education Working Group has developed two documents to help early years settings managers and staff consider their practice and to take steps to safeguard both children and adults online.

2 Wakefield Early Help Summit “Talk to Action”

On the 15 January 2019, the Early Help Partnership hosted a Early Help ‘Talk to Action’ Summit. The primary goal of the Summit was to bring together Partners and professionals under one roof to raise awareness and opportunities in supporting early help across the district. Over 100 professionals from across the district took part in conversations, listened to presentations and briefings from the Council, Health, Police, Schools and the Voluntary Sector. Opening the Summit, Merran McRae, Chief Executive Wakefield Council, highlighted the Council priorities and the Wakefield Way for Successful People and Places to reduce inequalities, grow good skill levels, embed a good quality of life and support families. Beate Wagner Corporate Director for Children and Young People’s Service underscored the “One Team” approach across the partnership – co-located or virtually connected, who understands each other’s expertise and can rely on each other – joined up “behind the scenes”. Guest speaker Brid Featherstone, Professor of Social Work at the University of Huddersfield led a discussion on the transformational power of strengthening communities to care. A family video underpinned the partnerships ethos that being able to talk to the right people about what additional help you may need, helps you find the right support. Early Help Partners from Schools, Police, Health, VCS and Young Lives Consortium shared the last six months of the early help partnership, emphasising that “ Joint working across the partnership will build on existing community resilience work and link to existing local activity and groups, including our links to Community Anchors, Police Community Support Officer based in Children First Hubs”. An inspiring early help story told by a parent captured the audience’s hearts and minds. The story highlighted when we work together to identify the needs of children and their families as soon as possible and take swift action to address those needs, we can stop problems developing, getting worse or becoming entrenched. Six young people from the Build our Futures Group (Children in Care Council) showcased their Build our Futures video presentation. Hearing the voice of the young people underlined the importance for children who need additional help that every day matters. Closing the Summit Councilor Richard Forster, Children and Young People’s Service said:

“the impact of hearing powerfully today about the experiences from children and family’s stresses that our services are only going to make a difference if we are listening and shaping our services based on what we are told”

3 Early Help Local Conversation

To support Early Help partnership working across the Wakefield District we are developing Early Help Multi-Agency Panel meetings or ‘Local Conversations’. These will take place across the district and will enable practitioners who provide Early Help support to children and families to share information and identify the most appropriate support, at the earliest possible opportunity. This may include advice to practitioners already working with a family, signposting or referral and allocation to more targeted support. The meetings will also provide a forum for agencies to understand each other better and to share local intelligence in order to plan responses to emerging issues.

Discussions are taking place with partners to develop an effective model which will support a wide range of partners to be involved in the meetings with the aim of the first Early Help Multi—Agency Panel meetings taking place in May Smoking New Year Recent figures show that around 21% of deaths and 4,400 hospital admissions each year in Wakefield are due to smoking-related illness.

In 2017/18 alone, NHS Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) spent nearly half a million pounds treating pregnant women and babies in hospital for smoking related conditions.

In the New Year, many people will make a resolution to quit smoking. Yorkshire Smokefree provides expert NHS advice and support for anyone who wants to stop smoking, and thousands of people have already quit with their help.

They offer telephone support, face to face sessions, and a unique online quit programme. Contact the Wakefield team on 0800 612 0011 (free from landlines) or 0330 660 1166 (free from most mobiles), or visit www.yorkshiresmokefree.nhs.uk

Read more here.

Information Network Register (IN) (formerly known as the Disabled Children’s Register). The IN currently has 600 families registered, but the SEND team would like to reach many more. The register helps to support families by offering the option of receiving information about training, support services, consultation and a regular newsletter. Families can also opt to receive a free Max Card, offering discounted entry to over 3000 venues across the country.

You can contact the SEND Team for more information via phone: 01924 302471 or by email: [email protected] You can download more information via www.wakefield.mylocaloffer.org/ information-network

4 Safeguarding and Review Unit is moving

The Safeguarding and Review Unit (SGRU) is pleased to announce that they have moved to Five Towns Centre, 12 Welbeck St, , WF10 1DP on the 12th February 2019. SGRU has responsibility for the Child Protection Conference process, Children in Care Reviews, Foster Carer Reviews and the allegations management process covered by the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) The telephone number for the Child Protection Admin Team is 01977 727143 and the email address is [email protected] The telephone number for the LADO is 01977 727032 and the email address is [email protected] The remainder of the contact telephone numbers will be circulated once they have been assigned. Child Protection Conferences will now be held within this venue in the dedicated conference rooms which will provide continuity for those attending, much improved conference facilities and more flexibility in the timing of the meetings. There are a number of car parks very close to the venue and it is located near to the Railway Station and the Bus Station, meaning the building is accessible to all. Early Help Register

The WeCAF System has been replaced with an Early Help Register. Information you record on the Register will be used to analyse and identify the range and level of early help to better target support and services to where they are most needed. Click here to access the Register and a ‘how to’ complete the Register video. If you are a professional and are looking for additional support for a child or family, or to determine additional support, please complete an Early Help Assessment. This can be your own internal Early Help Assessment (EHA), a Common Assessment Framework (CAF), Signs of Safety (SoS) mapping – or a template which is currently being developed that agencies may wish to adopt. If you don’t have an EHA process or document in place, please contact the Children First Hubs who can offer support with this. Once an assessment is completed a simple registration form should be completed to record this. This is an online form, accessed through the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) website, which records basic family details, reason for assessment and who completed the assessment. This is not a referral and will not hold the full assessment so doesn’t require log in/password and is very accessible.

5 Anti-Bullying Week 12th—16th November 2018 Schools Contribution

Castleford celebrated the National Campaign of 'Anti-Bullying Week' during the week commencing 12th November 2018. Castleford Academy believe every week should be an anti-bullying week, they wanted to draw extra attention to the effects that bullying can have on young people's mental health.

During the week, all year groups received an assembly on 'altruism' to encourage them to do random acts of kindness each day, such as complimenting their peers' work in a lesson. They also joined the charity 'Anti-Bullying Alliance' in celebrating 'Odd Sock Day'- in which students (& staff!) were asked to wear odd socks to demonstrate that we're all different! Anyone who wore odd socks on Friday 16th November 2018, brought in a donation to give to 'Young Minds' which is an organisation set up to support young people with their mental health, and in total we raised over £280.

One student from Year 9 commented

"I really enjoyed odd sock day, it was fun and I liked that we not only raised awareness to a great cause, but raised a lot of money too". A teacher said "I thoroughly enjoyed over hearing conversations during compliment day, it was great to see students being so positive about one another".

Horbury Academy undertook a number of activities during Anti-Bullying Week, they ran a poster competition for Year 7 Students. They held student drop-in sessions at break and lunch across the week with help from the academy ambassadors. shared resources and policies with students and reminded them who they can turn too within school. Respect Assemblies where ran during the week, which all students across the school attended.

QEGS Wakefield Junior School invited a company called Action Work to come into school and deliver an interactive and creative workshop for students to participate in. Some of the topics that they covered included: Friendships, defining bullying and strategies to deal with bullying. QEGS Wakefield Junior School also participated and supported the Odd Sock Day. What is the MOMO Challenge?

The Momo Challenge is a game played over WhatsApp where participants contact the character Momo and are then told to do a series of challenges, with the final challenge allegedly being suicide. Despite people having to use WhatsApp to partake in the challenge, that is not how most people find out about it. Many prominent YouTubers create videos of themselves trying to reach out to Momo which get many views through, for example, sharing on social media. For more information visitwww.parentzone.org.uk/article/three -minute-briefing-momo-challenge

6 The Role of the Local Authority Designated Officer in managing allegations against professionals or volunteers working with children in Wakefield. The Allegation Management Process: Agencies in Wakefield must inform the LADO of any safeguarding allegations in respect of any of their staff either paid or volunteers who work in any capacity with children as soon as possible and within 24 hours of the allegation being made and complete a Referral Form and send [email protected].

The LADO is responsible for overseeing the planning and progress of responses to any allegation against someone who works with children in Wakefield.

There may need to be a child protection investigation, a- multi agency child and family assessment led by Children’s Services, a criminal investigation by the Police, and/or a management investigation by an employer.

The LADO coordinates the required response and, where necessary, will call an Allegations Management Meeting. When an allegation is concluded, a professional judgement will be made as to whether an allegation is substantiated, unsubstantiated, unfounded, false or malicious.

Further information about the work of the Designated Officer and Wakefield’s Allegation Management process (including a copy of the LADO Referral Form) is available on the Wakefield and District LSCB website and in Section 2.6 of the West Yorkshire Consortium Online Safeguarding Children procedures.

The Wakefield LADO is a qualified social worker and is a member of the Safeguarding and Quality Assurance Service. The LADO is based at Five Towns Resource Centre and can be contacted on 01977 727032 or by e-mail at [email protected].

Any agency or organisation can seek advice from the LADO about a safeguarding situation involving staff or volunteers. Any referrals should be sent within 24 hours of a concern or allegation being made.

WDSCB Twitter Account The LSCB has it’s own twitter account that is updated on a daily basis, if you haven't already been on twitter and followed us I urge you to do so. We are always adding Wakefield District Safeguarding information & resource links onto the twitter account for multi-agency Children’s Board purposes. You can follow us by clicking here. Room 59, Wakefield County Hall, Newsletter Feedback Bond Street, Your feedback is important as it helps us to continuously improve our Wakefield, newsletter and make it of interest to you. We also encourage partners to WF1 2HQ Phone: 01924 306447 contribute to create a multi-agency newsletter which contains items rele- E-mail: vant to staff from across the partnership. [email protected] If you wish to make a contribution to the newsletter please contact Anthony-Tobias James Barlow-Hehir - Business Admin Support Officer at [email protected] or by calling 01924 307712.

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