Safeguarding Children Board
Making safeguarding everybody's business
The Barnet Safeguarding Children Board (BSCB) is a multi-agency group that exists 'to make Barnet a safer place for all children and young people'. A safer place means children and young people are safe at home, safe in school and safe in the community.
BSCB includes a wide range of members from different organisations and communities in Barnet and tries to ensure that services work together effectively to protect children and young people from harm.
A number of different sub-groups support the work of the BSCB in specific areas. These are:
- Child Death Overview Panel. This panel reviews all child deaths in order to learn any lessons which could reduce child deaths in future.
- E-safeguarding.This group looks at some of the risks to children associated with new forms of technology and how we can raise awareness and provide information to children, parents and practitioners.
- Domestic Violence. This group looks at how we can better work together to protect children and young people from the harmful effects of domestic violence.
- Training and Development. This group aims to ensure that everyone who needs it has access to child protection training and other learning opportunities.
- Faith and Community. Through our links with different faith and community groups we hope to develop greater awareness and understanding of everbody’s contribution to safeguarding and protecting children.
- Safeguarding Standards. This group is responsible for reviewing how agencies work together and seeks to promote improvements in how children and young people are safeguarded.
- Missing Children. This group looks at issues around children and young people in Barnet who go missing from home or from school and who are extremely vulnerable.
- Serious Case Review. When a child or young person dies or is seriously harmed a review may be carried out to establish whether there are lessons to be learnt about how services have worked together.
London Child Protection Procedures
All local authorities in London follow the London child protection procedures in order to ensure consistency across the capital. The procedures set out how agencies and individuals should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Their target audience is professionals (including unqualified staff and volunteers) and front-line managers who have particular responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. The procedures are also aimed at senior and operational managers in all agencies providing or commissioning services for children, families and adults who are parents.
The procedures contains important guidance relating to;
- how to recognise and respond to abuse
- how to conduct child protection investigations and conferences
- how to develop and monitor child protection plans.
The procedures were revised at the beginning of 2008 and many new sections have been added. Among these are:
- information sharing
- working with uncooperative families
- unexpected death of a child
- risk management of known offenders.
The procedures also contains a section with a range of new information about children in specific circumstances including
- animal abuse
- bullying
- firesetting
- foster care
- hospitals
- psychiatric care for children
- spirit possession or witchcraft.
If you would like further information or guidance on how to use these procedures, please contact the Barnet Safeguarding Board Development Officer (contact details shown on the left).
Training for practitioners working with children and families
There are a wide range of training opportunties for all practitioners who work in Barnet. Further information about these opportunities along with an application form are shown on the Safeguarding Children Board Training Page.
Children, young people and families
