Subgroups
There are five sub groups for the HSCP. These groups are the Scrutiny & Audit Subgroup, , Learning & Development Subgroup, Case Review Sub Group, Strategic MASH & Early Help Forum and Strategic MACE Meeting.
These groups allow the HSCP to meet its scrutiny and improvement responsibilities outlined in Working Together 2023.
The HSCP will continue to adopt the respective London Safeguarding Board policies, procedures, guidance and protocols. Any additional guidance required locally will be produced by the appropriate Sub or Thematic Group.
Subgroups will seek to develop co-chairing arrangements to promote wider partnership engagement of leadership roles.
Harrow local authority area is part of the regional North West London Child Death Overview Panel arrangements.
A key component of the partnerships function is to scrutinise the effectiveness of how well agencies work together. This Subgroup will conduct a series of multiagency audits per year, informed by data intelligence, Board priorities and findings from case reviews.
This group will develop and monitor actions plans resulting from multi-agency audits or identified performance risks and ensure that actions are completed in a timely manner (within six months).
It will identify whether practice has changed as a result of completed audits and action plans, through performance data review and re-auditing where necessary.
It will ensure that all relevant safeguarding partners across both children and adult services are included in multi-agency performance data analysis and audits. The group will also receive, analyse and challenge relevant single agency inspection findings, audit reports and performance reviews, and identify any significant issues that need to be monitored or escalated.
Multi-agency training is a priority for the Safeguarding Partners. It helps to ensure that practitioners and their managers are equipped with the right knowledge and experience to carry out their duties and responsibilities. The Learning and Development Subgroup will identify multi-agency safeguarding learning needs that require addressing, to ensure partner agencies develop their workforces to a high-quality standard and are keeping children and people with care and support needs safe and appropriately supported. It will be responsible for planning and organising appropriate multi-agency safeguarding learning and development activities, as well as challenging or influencing the activities delivered by individual agencies. It will deliver consistently high-quality multi-agency safeguarding learning and development activities that incorporate relevant research, national good practice and learning from case reviews and safeguarding adult reviews. It will evaluate the quality and impact of multi-agency learning and development activities to seek assurance that they meet requirements and inform future practice and planning.
It will report to the Safeguarding Children Partnership on how inter-agency training will be commissioned, delivered and monitored for impact, including how learning will be embedded across different agencies.
This group will oversee the review of serious child safeguarding cases (which are not led by the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel) which raise issues of importance in relation to Harrow. The purpose of undertaking reviews will be to identify any improvements that should be made locally to safeguard children or people with care and support needs. The reviews will enable partners to identify and understand the reasons and causes of strengths and weaknesses in local practice. The arrangements will include sharing of good practice as well as assessment of situations where there have been near misses , and will set out how lessons learnt will be applied and monitored. This group will ensure clarity, high quality and consistency in practice in carrying out case reviews and ensure that the partnership learn lessons that can improve the response to children, vulnerable adults and families. All case reviews will be carried out to provide learning and development for individuals, teams and organisations involved in safeguarding. The sub group will maintain this learning as its primary focus. Case reviews can be time consuming and costly. This group will seek to develop an appropriate range of review tools, which makes review in Harrow more efficient and timely.
This Subgroup will provide strategic multi-agency oversight of the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and ongoing delivery of the multi-agency Early Help model.
Alongside the Scrutiny & Audit Subgroup, the Strategic MASH & Early Help Forum will ensure monthly oversight of key MASH and Early Help data and undertake strategic multi-agency auditing to understand the effectiveness of immediate safeguarding and Early Help support being offered provided to children and families.
This group provides strategic multi-agency oversight of the Operational Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) Meeting, which provides multi-agency support for agencies to protect young people at risk of or experiencing Child Exploitation.
This quarterly subgroup will seek to understand and respond at a strategic level to any emerging trends or emerging safeguarding concerns for children and young people in Harrow regarding child (sexual and criminal) exploitation.