My role as Independent Scrutineer in Leeds remains unchanged from the last two annual reports. I remain commissioned to provide 36 days of independent scrutiny to the Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership each financial year.
The aims of the Scrutineer role are to support and challenge statutory partner safeguarding agencies and other bodies concerned with safeguarding in Leeds. The functions of the Independent Scrutineer are set out in Government guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children. These functions did not change when the latest version of that guidance was issued in March 2026 although there is likely to be some consideration of defining the role more precisely in further revisions for consultation in 2026/27 to achieve greater consistency in how Scrutineers function.
In Leeds in 2025/26, I implemented the agreed independent scrutiny plan. The main focus of my activities has been:
- Regular attendance in several multi-agency Safeguarding Partnership sub-groups including the Safeguarding Executive group which comprises the three Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSPs) and the full Safeguarding Partnership meetings
- Support and challenge to those groups in 2025 to clarify and change their roles to enhance the Partnership’s discussions of key challenges in the safeguarding system and to focus its discussions on safeguarding questions related to children in need of targeted support or protection and find an alternative means of considering the relevant parts of the wider children’s plan. This work also freed up the Executive from being faced with too many demands on its time and ensured that the Partnership took full part and that too much responsibility was not placed on the shoulders of the three DSPs
- Advice and challenge provided to the Review Advisory Group (RAG) and to DSPs about cases requiring reviews and proceeding in respect of type of review and recommendations further to the learning identified. The number of reviews has grown in 2025/26 (see below) and this activity has therefore taken up much of my time. The overall quality of review reports has improved, agencies are able to reach key points of learning more quickly following Rapid Reviews and have used the learning to inform other work in the Partnership
- Leadership of the early phase of the Partnership’s consideration of key learning and formulation of a need for a multi-agency Neglect Project group to work in 2026/27 to improve multi-agency learning and understand and respond to systems pressures and issues causing focus on children to drift in many of the small number of cases considered in case review processes
- Provision of advice to the DSPs about the key opportunities and risks arising from the Government’s Families First Reforms now enshrined in legislation in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. I was also able to provide clarity on the issues which required agreement of the multi-agency Safeguarding Partnership given the establishment of a specific governance function around this development led by the local authority. The Partnership needs to agree changes to the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA) and these are published by the Partnership. These changes will relate to future development of new family help services and the future Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams
- I have enabled safeguarding partners to consider other key messages arising from national reviews following the tragic deaths of Sara Sharif in Surrey and Victoria Marten in Sussex and those arising from National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel summaries of key issues in case reviews relating to intra-familial child sexual abuse and race and racism in Safeguarding. I also met with members of the Silver MACE (named as this relates to Multi-Agency Child Exploitation arrangements) to consider the implications of the national report by Baroness Casey into child exploitation. As a result, the Silver MACE group in Leeds is undertaking a review of a small number of cases to understand practice around concerns related to child sexual exploitation given that the recorded number of assessments of sexual exploitation has fallen in Leeds, as it has elsewhere, albeit this is almost certainly to do with wider recognition that sexual exploitation is one form of exploitation faced by children who also experience criminal exploitation and financial exploitation
Partnership achievements
The Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership has achieved a lot in 2025/26 although the latter half of this year has been challenging for all agencies because of multiple changes in organisational functions and leadership.
The most significant achievements in my view have been:
- The Safeguarding Partnership took a full part in the Ofsted inspection of services provided to children in Leeds in July 2025. This inspection rated the standards in Leeds as ‘Outstanding’ for the third time in a row, meaning Leeds has a proud record of being rated outstanding consistently for six years. The inspection report noted positive multi-agency relationships and working together and the continued commitment to trauma-informed restorative or relational practice both in the local authority but also in other agencies as the bedrock of successful work with children and families leading to positive change in many situations. Ofsted did express a concern about lack of consistency in identification and response to concerns about child neglect and this view accorded with the summary of themes from case reviews in Leeds. The Partnership has therefore agreed a focus on neglect as a priority from 2025 to 2027 at least to understand how to address practice and any systemic issues which lie behind difficulties for practitioners
- A new Business Manager was appointed and began work in the Partnership in October 2025, bringing with her the experience and ability carved in a different local safeguarding partnership in a different role. This appointment has provided a basis for reconsideration of sub-group structures and management of staff and processes going forward. The new Business Manager very quickly identified and obtained the agreement of DSPs to appoint to a post focused on improving multi-agency learning and development activity in the partnership. The previous Business Manager left her post to assume employment elsewhere at the end of May 2025
- The re-set of Partnership and Executive functions was a significant step forward and agreed by the Executive in September 2025 and launched at the Partnership meeting in December 2025 alongside agreement in the Partnership meeting to launch the Neglect project
- This launch of the multi-agency Neglect Project deserves credit as it is an ambitious attempt to look to unlock difficulties in practice around neglect that have dogged the safeguarding system throughout the country for fifty or more years. The project aims to understand what it is that enables good practice, what are the key obstacles and to consider recent research and practice elsewhere to formulate recommendations for Leeds. The project seeks to go beyond the more standard approach of agreeing a multi-agency strategy in the knowledge that such strategies have not avoided continued difficulties in this area. These difficulties are in sum to do with different professional interpretations of when harm is caused by neglect, a desire to continue to work in partnership with families at all times, frequency and quality of high challenge in the multi-agency decision-making processes and confusion of neglect with poverty. This Neglect Project was also agreed to be the next stage of the Partnership priority relating to safeguarding through early or family help
- A start was made to considering implementation of the Government’s Families First reforms aimed to improve family help and reduce the number of children needing to enter local authority care across the country. An initial multi-agency event was held with good multi-agency attendance in the East of Leeds and agreed to base future family help services (where targeted support and Children in Need services are combined with services for children in need of protection) around existing early help clusters, noting their effectiveness in providing support to many families
- The processes involved in case reviews have been improved and each of the statutory partner agency leads spent time in producing video messages for all practitioners in August 2025 to outline what reviews are about and when the Partnership does them and the key themes arising from reviews. Because of improved visibility and because of improved mechanisms for review learning to be shared more quickly and more effectively across agencies, there was an increase in rapid reviews undertaken from two in 2024/25 to nine in 2025/26. This should be seen as a sign of the Partnership maturing and being able to ask tough questions of one another and learn lessons. It is noteworthy that the National Panel annual report for 2024/25 expressed concern that there had been a 21% reduction in the number of reviews conducted across the country and therefore this increase in numbers is a positive move to improve learning from reviews. National Panel feedback on the quality of reviews in Leeds shows an improvement trajectory
- The Partnership has acted to understand the implications of most of the national reviews and reports highlighted earlier.
- The Executive members and I met with a group of care leavers in May 2025 to begin a journey of embracing children’s voices in Safeguarding Partnership planning as required by Government guidance. Care leavers provided useful views about the importance of relationship with social workers and personal advisors and the benefit of avoiding too many changes and asked questions about leaving care accommodation continuing to be focused in areas of social deprivation and crime
Partnership challenges
The year proved to be more challenging regardless of achievements and these challenges increased in the last half of the year. The Partnership has struggled for clear leadership, and this has affected the capacity of the Partnership to build on the achievements.
The reason behind this was the change in leadership in all three statutory partners at the same time. The Director of Children and Families was on extended absence from November 2025 and an Interim DCS appointed in January 2026 to continue until at least the end of the calendar year (since become a permanent postholder in 2026). The health DSP retired from her position in January 2026 in a move that was known and anticipated but the NHS reforms and impact on the ICB meant that an interim DSP was in place from Health from January to March 2026 with a new permanent DSP being in place from April 2026. The Police Chief Superintendent who was Chair of the Executive group and Partnership was also then posted to another position by the police in April 2026 a few months ahead of his intended retirement.
These changes removed at some speed the three DSPs who were all longstanding and respected leads in the Partnership. New DSPs, both interim and permanent appointments, have therefore needed to get to grips with the increasing challenges arising from new national requirements while also ensuring that standards are maintained given inevitable changes in other management positions in each agency. There is in my view some learning for local organisations in how to avoid such a level of change all taking place at the same time as contingency planning had been based on the change in Health leadership alone.
Aside from the need to get to grips with issues and the need to develop new relationships at senior levels, the impact in respect of the achievements listed above was most acute in that the full Safeguarding Partnership did not meet again in 2025/26 further to its successful re-set meeting in December 2025. There was also no further meeting with the group of care leavers with whom the Executive members had met in May 2025 and multi-agency planning for future Families First reforms was delayed, albeit the legislation was delayed in Parliament in any event, although the expectation remains of implementation by the end of March 2027.
The other key challenge to the effectiveness of the Partnership going forward is that of capacity in agencies to support the Partnership’s sub-groups and workstreams where the bulk of the detailed work needed takes place. This is not a new challenge but one which requires continual monitoring by the DSPs to ensure that single agency or operational responsibilities do not always take priority over multi-agency partnership requirements. It will be important that the Executive ensure that gaps in chairing and vice-chairing multi-agency groups are closed while also addressing whether some sub-group functions could be merged to reduce demand given reduced capacity in agencies.
Priorities for the safeguarding partnership 2026/27
The year ahead contains more change still and it is right to acknowledge that all public sector agencies engaged in safeguarding children are doing so with strained and diminishing levels of Government funding and with challenges about workforce recruitment and retention given the stress and risks associated with the roles. In 2026/27, those same public sector agencies will be asked to make significant changes to how family help and safeguarding systems operate and to do so without further workforce retention difficulties arising and without increasing risk to children during change.
The scale of changes is some of the greatest since the introduction of the Children Act 1989. Nonetheless these changes are both challenges and opportunities for the LSCP.
In this context, the greatest priority for the LSCP is to maintain stability in leadership and ensure that the wider group of safeguarding leads in agencies is engaged through an effective Partnership and sub-groups.
Those who attend these meetings in Leeds from all agencies are impressive in their commitment to ensuring that systems to protect children are as safe as can be. The quality of individual agency analysis brought to case reviews is very high and honest and shared with other agencies. This is bult in part on long-established relationships capable of challenge and ensuring engagement of this wider group of leaders in the changes ahead will ensure positive processes in my view.
The key changes currently foreseeable are:
- Implementation of Family Help and Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPT) in line with the requirements of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. This needs to be in place by the end of March 2027 and will need to be the single greatest priority for the Safeguarding Partnership to influence design and lead implementation. The Executive group is already considering progress at each of its monthly meetings. It is important too to recognise that the MACPT is a potential positive solution to improving consistency of good practice as the MACPT role is to oversee all child protection activity and ensure that safeguarding issues being dealt with in Family Help services are quality controlled
- Parliament has also now agreed the Crime and Policing Act in 2026. This legislation includes among other things the introduction of the legal requirement to report concerns about child sexual abuse as recommended by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. The Government will issue statutory guidance on how this system will operate for implementation in 2026/27
- The Government has also been clear that it intends in 2026/27 to launch the existing Information Commissioner guidance on information sharing and safeguarding children and place the need to follow this guidance on a statutory footing given the frequency with which case reviews across the country indicate problems in agencies sharing information. This will need clear communication to practitioners and especially the ICO guidance on sharing information without consent where not provided whether there are safeguarding concerns or a need to promote a child’s welfare. This change presents an opportunity for agencies in Leeds to improve practice and reach mutual understanding of the need to share and to do so earlier rather than later
- While the Government issued the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 guidance in March 2026, it was clear that there would be consultation in 2026/27 on a raft of further changes. These are likely to be extensive and will relate to future reporting of Safeguarding Partnerships being undertaken in a standardised fashion across the country and there will be greater expectation to demonstrate effectiveness and outcomes and to show how planning has taken account of the views of children, how children are consulted with on a regular basis and the impact of changes made further to children expressing views. This is a particular priority for the partnership in Leeds given that there has not been a sustained strategy on this front although this issue has been discussed regularly with the Partnership relying previously on the views obtained of all children in Leeds about a range of topics
In addition to responding to national change initiatives, legislation and guidance, the Leeds Safeguarding Partnership will also need to pay attention in 2026/27 to ensuring that there is a conclusion of the Neglect Project. There might be further work to do after 2026/27 but the key things to change and consider in terms of improving working with neglect concerns need to be reflected by January 2027 and included within planning for the Families First implementation of Family Help and MACPTs.
Finally, the Partnership already has plans and will need to implement these plans to share key lessons arising from case reviews in Leeds with frontline managers and practitioners in four events, three of which will be held on a face-to-face basis in view of the importance of honest face-to-face conversation, support and challenge to learn. These events will inform the Partnership further in respect of priorities.
In sum
Despite the changes made in the leadership of all three statutory partners in the short period of time from January to April 2026, the Leeds Safeguarding Partnership continued to make progress on several fronts.
The multi-agency works which led to the positive inspection outcome in the ILACS inspection in July 2025 was as outstanding as the result of the inspection.
The ease with which it was possible to link the themes from case reviews with the inspection finding to develop an ambitious multi-agency project focused on neglect is noteworthy. This project has significant multi-agency support and involvement.
The increase in number of case reviews and identification of learning is evidence of a mature Partnership in which agencies can analyse complex matters together and challenge one another and understand that safeguarding and case review decision making is genuinely a multi-agency one.
The work undertaken with national expert Professor Carlene Firmin in respect of child exploitation cases has provided agencies in Leeds with cutting edge and leading academic and research expertise.
There has been challenge to leadership and there continues to be challenge around capacity considering the difficulties faced by all public sector bodies dealing with funding shortfalls and new structural requirements from Government. It will be important that the new multi-agency safeguarding leadership in Leeds takes the steps needed to ensure that the effective engagement of partners in safeguarding continues.
I will finish my section of the Annual Report 2026 with a positive reminder that Leeds is not alone in facing many of these challenges but that in my contacts with leaders, managers and staff in all agencies in Leeds, there continues to be a determination to do what is right for children and what can be achieved with families wherever possible and there is a welcome and openness to challenge and scrutiny that is rooted in the relational approach adopted in Leeds some years ago, lies at the heart of the Families First reforms and is the continuous flame to guide future challenge, future learning and future improvement for all agencies working together.
David Derbyshire
Independent Scrutineer
Leeds Safeguarding Children Partnership