LSCB Archive

Minutes of the LSCB and Core Business Group meetings are now available.

Chapter 10

It is just over a year since we established our statutory Local Safeguarding Children Board and a busy year it has been. The profile and expectations of LSCBs has risen considerably to include the responsibility for overseeing a number of issues including safe recruitment and managing allegations against staff. Whilst we welcome the broadening of our safeguarding role we are committed to making best use of our limited resources by retaining a focus on child protection.

We have achieved much this past year, in particular the revision of our procedures, in line with Working Together, and the launch of our website, both of which we are very proud and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who worked so hard to deliver them.

One of the key responsibilities of the Board is to audit, scrutinise and evaluate the performance of all member agencies to ensure safeguarding remains high on our agendas and at a practice level, that performance is sound. We are developing a Performance Framework to ensure we deliver this thoroughly.

This is a time of considerable change for several of our member organisations and we know from research that this can make children ‘at risk’ even more vulnerable. As colleagues in our own and other agencies move to new roles and long-standing, trusted and respected relationships are severed it is essential that we all make it our business to keep abreast of changes and actively build new relationships.

Children and Young People’s Services in Rutland underwent a Joint Area Review (JAR) in 2006 where safeguarding was rated highly. Leicestershire and Leicester City both have Joint Area Reviews during the second half of 2007, as part of which the LSCB and partner agencies will have a key role in the assessment under the ‘Staying Safe’ outcome.

We are beginning work on our responsibility to establish Child Death Review Teams by April 2008 and I will tell you more about this in future editions.

Finally, it needs to be recognised that the success of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland  Local Safeguarding Children Board in achieving its objectives and meeting its responsibilities depends largely on effective collaboration between partner agencies, so many thanks to you all.

After 28 years’ service Detective Inspector Liz Underwood is retiring from Leicestershire Constabulary and relinquishing her post as head of the police Child Abuse Investigation Unit.  Liz has headed up the Unit for the past three years and under her direction we have seen some significant changes both in the structures and remit of the Unit and in our joint working with partner agencies.  Liz has been responsible for introducing these changes for the Force and ensuring they have been successfully implemented whilst causing the least disruption possible to day-to-day working.  During this secondment she has also been a key player in the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, and has played a significant role in the re-writing of the LSCB procedures.

She is looking forward to a long retirement with her husband Mark (also a retiring Police Inspector) and their dogs on the island of St Mary’s in the Scilly Isles.

I would like to thank Liz on behalf of myself and her colleagues in the police Child Abuse Investigation Unit and I am sure you would want me to extend that thanks from her colleagues and friends within the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board.

As one door closes another one opens and Liz will be replaced by Detective Inspector Donna Thomson.  Donna is an ex-Metropolitan police officer who came to work in the constabulary eight years ago.  Since then she has been involved in a number of different areas of police work, including the child protection arena.  Donna is now appointed and in post and is starting to meet and work with her Local Safeguarding Children’s Board colleagues.  We are very pleased to welcome Donna to the department and from the work she has already completed we know that we have made the right choice.

Just one last thing: if, as I predict, Liz finds it too quiet on her isolated island, she could always give me a call because I am sure there will be loads of audit work that will need doing!