Vulnerable Children and Safeguarding referrals and the Governor Responsibility

Service:

Children and Families Social Care

Author:

Lucy Cook – Service Lead – Children and Families Social Care

Why the Report is coming to Chair and Vice Chair Governors meeting

To provide the Governors with an insight into the interface between schools and Children and Families Social Care to ensure that children are safeguarded and supported to reduce vulnerability and risk.

Recommendation

To note the contents of the report, and to agree to cascade any updates to school governors.

Background

Working Together to Safeguard Children was first published in 2006 and is subject to regular updates. The core principle of the document was to set out statutory guidance on inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

Aside from home, children and young people spend most of their time at school. They form relationships with teachers, staff and their peers. Teachers also engage with parents and wider family members to ensure children have what they need to meet their educational potential. Most of our children and young people enjoy a positive childhood, where they feel safe, cared for and supported by the adults around them. Some children and their families are more vulnerable and need additional support and intervention to enable them to fulfil potential.

School staff are often the first professional that children confide in, trust and allow insight into what life is like for them. Staff also notice changes in presentation or behaviour and can highlight concerns about welfare.

This report seeks to outline how schools ensure that vulnerable children are identified early and supported to reduce risks to them and strengthen the networks around them to lessen the impact of vulnerabilities.

Context

Children and Families Social Care in South Tyneside has an overall aim to protect and support vulnerable children and young people in the borough. They engage with families at various thresholds of risk and harm, from support at Early Help stage through to caring for those children where the risks were too severe for them to live at home with their family. School play a significant role in identifying these children and then supporting them going forward.

During the period of national lockdown, primary, secondary, alternative provision and special schools remained open to vulnerable children and young people and the children of critical workers only. All other pupils received remote education. Clinically extremely vulnerable pupils were also advised not to attend school.

Schools were expected to allow and strongly encourage vulnerable children and young people to attend. Parents and carers of vulnerable children and young people were strongly encouraged to take up the place. Initial discussions took place between schools and social workers at an early stage, along with parents, to ensure children and young people could attend if that was felt to be in their best interests. This ensured shared understanding of each child’s circumstances and allowed a response to mitigate any increased risks if parents decided not to take up the offer of school attendance. Examples of this were increased visiting, supplemented by schools as well as social workers. School also worked with Children and Families Social Care to identify those children that would benefit from a laptop and Wi-Fi to continue their learning at home.

The local authority monitored school attendance figures regularly, understanding which pupils were attending that were classed as vulnerable to ensure ongoing shared understanding of who was attending school.

This approach was successful in ensuring children and young people identified as vulnerable were supported during the lockdown periods. However, there is also a need to consider the impact of lockdown on families, and that some families became vulnerable during this period. Work to target these families was more of a challenge when children and young people were not routinely being “seen” by virtue of having to stay at home.

This was evidenced by a reduction in referrals from schools, during the period of the first lockdown which spanned the spring and summer term.

From April to September there were 145 contacts from Schools. This is a 65% (420) reduction on the same period for 2019.

In 2020 the 145 contacts related to 136 children compared to 250 children from the same period for 2019. This represents 45% fewer children from 2019 to 2020.

Additionally, this drop in contacts is starker when closer analysis reveals that 6 schools out of the 57 schools account for 74 of the Contacts, i.e. 51%.

26 schools did not make a contact with ISIT between April and September 2020.

This reduction is mirrored in Early Help referrals where there is a 91% reduction.

In September 2020 most children and young people returned to school. Work was completed in the period leading up to this with families who were likely to find the transition back into education difficult. Attendance was high and it assured that most children and young people returned to school successfully. It was anticipated that more safeguarding issues would arise as children and young people were more “visible” to professionals and others. The rise in referrals was not as high as anticipated between September and December 2020, and by the end of the year contacts into Children and Family Social care were comparable to that period in 2019. This offers some reassurance that the partnership, including schools, had maintained a focus on supporting and identifying the vulnerable and responding appropriately.

In January 2021 there was a further period of lockdown announced. School and the Local Authority repeated the exercise of understanding individual children’s circumstances. In this period of lockdown there was an increase of vulnerable children accessing the school setting. This was encouraging, particular given the greater emphasis on continuing the education offer in terms of home learning. As with the previous lockdown there was a decrease in referrals to Children and Families Social Care, this increased sharply when schools returned in March, though referrals from schools directly did not rise significantly.

At the yearend 2020-21, there were 168 children in South Tyneside subject to a child protection plan and 306 children looked after. A further 716 children and young people were open to the service as child in need, this also covers children with disabilities in addition to those where there are safeguarding and welfare concerns.

Conclusion and Next Steps

The 2020-21 year has been a significant challenge, with most people’s lives and functioning being impacted by the pandemic and restrictions that came with it. This has undoubtedly seen an increase in need for our more vulnerable families. Children and Families Social Care, schools and the rest of the partnership responded quickly and in cohesion to ensure families were supported as much as possible. The communication between services was successful in facilitating this to ensure there was shared understanding of what families needed and who would provide the support and monitoring.

Whilst this worked well, we must be conscious of those children who were not considered vulnerable, but became so during periods of lockdown. Children were generally less visible, not attending school, clubs, childcare and other routine appointments.

It is important as we move out of restrictions that professionals, including school staff, are curious about children’s lived experiences, so we can explore the wider impact of lockdown on families and the risks that increased to children and can respond appropriately.

We need to consider the longer term impact of Covid on children and their families. Children have experienced significant disruption, not only to their education but in all aspects of their lives, impacting upon them socially and emotionally. Schools and the wider partnership will continue to play a pivotal role in identifying those who are increasingly vulnerable and then working alongside Children and Families Social Care to support and reduce risk. Identifying safeguarding issues and alerting Children and Families Social Care is imperative within this, maintaining relationships with parents and interacting with children and their families to understand the pressures and mitigate the risks is a vital part of recovery from the impact of Covid.

In order to achieve this, we need to build upon what we have learnt and what has worked well over the past year, the importance of continuing conversations and shared understanding and further develop this to ensure effective systems are in place across the partnership to enable cohesive response to vulnerability, risk and need. Everyone who is invested in our young people has a role and responsibility to ensure they can intervene and engage with children and young people, and their families to maximise potential and aspiration and to ensure they are safe and able to achieve, including school staff and governors.