Agenda item

To receive the annual Safeguarding Vulnerable People Partnership Report.

The Board received a presentation and report from Mark Gurrey (Independent Chair of the Safeguarding Vulnerable People Partnership). The presentation covered the following matters:

Background of the Safeguarding Vulnerable People Partnership

• A background of the SVPP was provided, with the formation of the SVPP taking place in February 2019, following the Sir Alan Wood Review (2016) and Working Together Report (2018).
• The SVPP replaced the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and brings together the leads of Wiltshire’s services to develop a shared and equal responsibility for safeguarding arrangements.

An overview of the past year

• A Pan-Wiltshire Exploitation Sub-group was established in order to further support the response to exploitation and the contextual safeguarding approach.
• A review and restructure of the Safeguarding Adult Board as well as the Community Safety Partnership took place for improvement.
• A partnership approach was established for both statutory and non-statutory case reviews.
• The SVPP responded to the pandemic by using demand modelling to provide estimates on future demand to support response and future planning; a Covid-19 Safeguarding Review, which was a system-wide review of practice; as well as supporting frontline staff.
• The SVPP led the response to the Everyone’s Invited website.
• Practice was embedded in relation to rapid reviews on children who had died or been seriously harmed through abuse or neglect, with the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel providing positive feedback.

Case Reviews relating to children

• Since June 2018, the SVPP have made 10 notifications to the Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews national panel. Consequently 8 Rapid Reviews have taken place, including 6 featuring Under 1s, which is in line with national statistics.
• Additionally, a Thematic Review into the Significant Physical Abuse in Under 1s has taken place.

Priorities and next steps

• Work is being conducted in relation to safeguarding Under 1s and in an effort to streamline work, it has been agreed that the best lead for this work is the CCG across their own footprint. An Under 1s sub-group is therefore going to be developed to look at both local and national cases.
• Domestic Abuse (being led under the Community Safety Partnership), is a major safeguarding theme and there is a need to respond to the new Domestic Abuse Act.
• Exploitation and contextual safeguarding work will continue to progress having started in the past year.
• Regarding adult safeguarding, work is being done around mental health and learning disabilities, and the extent to which these needs are recognised and responded to.
• The SVPP wants to look at the leadership and cultures within partner organisations in order to consider the current systems under which safeguarding work is conducted.

Wider Developments

• New requirements have been put in place to define and develop the independent scrutiny in a robust and widespread manner of the SVPP.
• The DFE has provided funding for a post in order to develop a new approach to the collation and analysis of intelligence of data.
• The SVPP is seeking to continue with its partnership approach to practice reviews and to then embed the impact of learning.
• The SVPP is identified that it would like to improve its website along with wider communication.

In addition, the Board noted comments on the following matters:

• Praise was given to the SVPP system for being more accountable than the previous LSCB model and reassurance was given to Health and Wellbeing Board members that work is being done to ensure that Wiltshire people are safeguarded.

Decision – The Wiltshire Health and Wellbeing Board accepted the following recommended proposals:

i) Notes the publication of the SVPP Annual Report.

ii) Agrees to support the work of the SVPP.