In line with national requirements, the Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership has continued to engage an Independent Scrutineer to support and challenge the statutory partners to ensure that children in Leeds are safeguarded as well as possible. There was no change in these arrangements in Leeds in 2024-25.
The functions of the Independent Scrutineer in Leeds are to:
- provide safeguarding partners and relevant agencies with independent, rigorous, and effective support and challenge at both a strategic and operational level
- provide assurance to the whole system in judging the effectiveness of the multiagency safeguarding arrangements through a range of scrutiny methods
- ensure that statutory duties are being fulfilled, quality assurance mechanisms are in place, and that local child safeguarding practice reviews and national reviews are analysed, with key learning areas identified and effectively implemented across the safeguarding system
- ensure that the voice of children and families is considered as part of scrutiny and that this is at the heart of arrangements through direct feedback, informing policy and practice
- be regarded as a ‘critical friend’ and provide opportunities for two-way discussion and reflection between frontline practitioners and leaders. This will encourage and enable strong, clear, strategic leadership
- provide independent advice when there are disagreements between agencies and safeguarding partners and facilitate escalation procedures
- evaluate and contribute to multi-agency safeguarding published arrangements and the annual report, alongside feeding into the wider accountability systems, such as inspections
The Independent Scrutineer in Leeds implemented the agreed independent scrutiny plan. This involved regular attendance in several multi-agency partnerships groups, support to ensure that the new structure of sub-groups worked well and additional input to enable Leeds agencies to implement a plan of multi-agency reviews and audits.
The Independent Scrutineer also met with frontline practitioner groups with a focus on staff in NHS community and hospital services. As with other frontline staff, these staff groups demonstrated at all levels a very high level of knowledge, skill and curiosity about how best to safeguard children through working with partner agencies and families. All were extremely proud of working in Leeds and of their achievements with children and families, noting how the achievement of excellence was driven and supported by managers. It was extremely positive that all staff commented that the biggest strength of Leeds was the positive multi-agency relationships between the partner agencies and the commitment by all to seek to develop relationships with those in need of safeguarding, as a means of enabling those parents, extended families, children and young people to make the changes which were needed to improve safety. The Leeds relational approach to working with children and families in need is clearly alive and well and the cornerstone of positive working in the city.
The Independent Scrutineer has continued to attend the partnership’s case review advisory group which is responsible for ensuring that reviews are undertaken to learn lessons from cases where children have suffered serious harm related to child abuse or neglect. The support and challenge provided has helped the group to improve the emphasis in its reviews on the analysis of these cases and this in turn has improved the quality of the small number of rapid reviews carried out and avoided the need to undertake further lengthy child safeguarding practice reviews on occasions, meaning that lessons have been identified and learned and acted upon more quickly.
The Scrutineer has assisted managers to progress the agreed priority areas of domestic abuse, safeguarding teenagers from exploitation and ensuring that family help services are provided in ways which safeguard children, whilst also preventing child protection concerns from arising wherever possible. These groups will continue into the next year and the need to implement the Government’s Families First reform programme will be an important focus to ensure delivery of multi-agency family help and child protection services which build on the strength of existing services in Leeds and go further to safeguard children from neglect and abuse.
In the Annual Report for 2023-24, the Independent Scrutineer identified a number of priorities for the partnership in 2024-25. The Scrutineer has provided support and challenge to the partnership across these areas as set out below.
- Ensuring that the revised structure of sub-groups and priorities agreed by the LSCP work to full effect at a time when each of the three statutory partners faces challenges over resources with each having also needed to reduce financial contribution to the LSCP for 2024-25.
- Improving the multi-agency assurance of safeguarding service quality through a range of different review and audit approaches. This will strengthen the LSCP’s ability to direct attention and resources quickly.
- Ensuring implementation of Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 in respect of learning and development activity, governance arrangements and a revised protocol relating to working with Children in Need as required by the guidance.
- Enhancing working relationships with other strategic and planning groups in Leeds working with issues affecting the safeguarding of children, especially the Safer Leeds Executive, the Domestic Abuse Local Partnership and the Family Help Board.
- Enhancing current arrangements to ensure that the voice of children and young people influence safeguarding arrangements so that there is direct input from children and young people and especially those with experience of safeguarding systems.
- Improving the linkages between frontline staff and those making decisions in the LSCP so that the visibility of the LSCP for frontline staff is enhanced. The Independent Scrutineer will continue meeting with frontline staff and managers in the city to support this aim and ensure that there is a shared understanding of needs and issues wherever possible.
The Scrutineer has taken a lead role in the establishment of the Audit and Review Sub Group and has continued to attend the Case Review Advisory Group and provided an overview of the functioning of the sub groups, all of whose Chairs came together in February 2025 to report on progress made. This was an impressive set of achievements and activity undertaken across all agencies and the leadership of these groups is shared equally between the statutory partners and Education.
The Scrutineer played a significant role in assisting the setting up of the Audit and Review Sub Group and now remains a regular member of the group which is chaired by a senior officer in one of the partnership agencies. This group has implemented multi-agency reviews in the areas of work with families where domestic abuse is a concern, safeguarding referrals made to Children’s Social Care by members of the public and neglect. These reviews have adopted different methodologies and although small scale in nature, have all identified significant good practice in Leeds, as well as some areas for consideration of improvement.
The Scrutineer has supported the implementation of new Government guidance and the publication of the revised Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements in December 2024. The Scrutineer was involved with members of the Executive Group in considering both current arrangements regarding work with children in need and the question of a revised threshold document. The Scrutineer supported the partnership to remain with its existing approach to require conversations between practitioners whenever there were concerns about children’s well-being and the evidence from discussions with frontline practitioners is that this approach is seen as a significant strength in Leeds.
The Scrutineer has assisted the partnership to consider this area more recently and to ensure that safeguarding children is at the heart of all strategic planning arrangements is now planned for 2025-26. The Scrutineer has continued to meet regularly with the Chairs of the Safer Leeds Executive and the Safeguarding Adults Board.
The Scrutineer has collaborated closely with the manager and staff in the local authority responsible for promoting the influence of the voice of children and young people and has considered models used in other locations, to enable ways of optimising the voice and influence of children and young people with experience of safeguarding services. This is exciting work requiring a lot of preparation of young people by the responsible local authority team and a first meeting with members of the LSCP Executive and young people was scheduled for May 2025.
The Scrutineer has continued this work as above. The key issues shared by frontline staff are reported to the partnership Executive group to ensure there is a very senior level awareness of the questions and comments raised. The Scrutineer has also met with the Safeguarding Partnership’s new Practitioner Group which acts as an advisory group to the partnership.
The Scrutineer has also been involved in supporting and challenging the partnership in respect of implementing the improvements agreed further to the JTAI inspection of services for children at risk of involvement in serious youth violence in March 2024. This was a highly positive inspection overall for Leeds agencies engaged in this difficult area of work. The Scrutineer has also supported the partnership to receive progress reports in relation to improvement planning at HMI YOI at Wetherby further to its inspection in March 2024. It is positive that at the last report, there were no longer girls detained in Wetherby, given some of the difficulties faced in a prison service designed for boys. Nonetheless this might change again in the future and will remain a focus of attention for the Leeds partnership. It is positive that the new Governor of Wetherby YOI and his team have joined the safeguarding partnership subgroup concerned with other services involving detention of children, such as the secure children’s home and police custody services.
In conclusion, the multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding children in Leeds remain strong and this strength is shared across the three statutory partner agencies and Education and schools. The maintenance for some years of the relational approach to helping people facing significant life challenges is fundamental both to achieving positive outcomes for children but also in ensuring effective joint working relationships at strategic and practice levels. This strength will assist agencies in Leeds as they move to focus in 2025-26 on implementing the Government’s Families First reforms, involving multi-agency family help and child protection services and do so amid continued public sector austerity and significant reductions in funding for the Integrated Care Board in the NHS further to the announcement of national changes to NHS structures and functions.
David Derbyshire
Independent Scrutineer