What is the Safeguarding Children Board?
The City and Hackney SCB is a multi-disciplinary forum, bringing together senior representatives of each of the main agencies and professionals responsible for helping to safeguard children from harm
The primary role of the CHSCB is to reach agreement around how local services and professionals work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, and to ensure that these agreements are adhered to and implemented
Supporting this co-operation is the development of effective joint policies and procedures that are aimed at protecting children, keeping them safe throughout their day to day activities and providing a safe and protective environment in which they can grow up in and live
The CHSCB is a statutory body. This means that all decisions and recommendations are binding in line with good multi-agency practice. The CHSCB includes senior managers, who are in a position to commit their respective agencies to resources and agreed policy and procedure.
Responsibilities
- The SCB has a number of specific responsibilities, which are detailed within the following terms of reference:
- To develop policies and procedures for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in City and Hackney and to co-operate London-wide in the development of agreed all London procedures.
- To ensure all agencies working with children or in services affecting the safety and welfare of children have safe recruitment practices.
- To develop and implement a training strategy to meet the training needs of staff across all agencies to work effectively together to safeguard and promote the welfare of child who may be at risk of significant harm.
- To ensure that there is a competently trained and supervised workforce who work with children or in services affecting the safety and welfare of children in the City and Hackney
- To provide the analysis and overview of agency involvement in cases which meet the criteria for serious case reviews set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children 2006
- To ensure that recommendations and lessons learned from the reviews of individual cases are incorporated into agency practice
- To promote safeguarding children as a shared responsibility across all organisations and partner agencies in City and Hackney as well as the wider community.
- To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of what is done by partner agencies in the City and Hackney individually and collectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
- To influence the local planning and commissioning of children’s services and other services that affect the safety and welfare of children to ensure that they take safeguarding and the promotion of the welfare of children into account.
Scope of interest
The scope of the highlighted responsibilities of the SCB will extend to all children within City and Hackney
It is to ensure that all children who live and grow up in the City and Hackney can do so in an environment that protects and respects them, and offers opportunities that enhance their life chances.
We want to make the City and Hackney a Good Place to Grow Up In and we want to make sure children can do so safely.
The CHSCB also develops its interests with the wider community, working with and raising awareness amongst other agencies, committees and individuals about how everybody can contribute to the safeguarding and promotion of children's welfare.
CHSCB interest is also directed within its member agencies, ensuring that working together across disciplines is sustained in the best interests of the children of City and Hackney.
The SCB's scope of interest also extends to actively promoting and encouraging appropriate programmes and initiatives that address the issue of preventing child abuse and neglect.
For information on signs of abuse see the Hackney Child Protection page.
If you are in any doubt as to the immediate safety of any child call 999
Page updated: 4 Jun 2008