Agenda item

The 2024–2025 Local Safeguarding Chilren Partnership Annual Report outlines a year of strong safeguarding performance in Hammersmith & Fulham. It highlights progress in areas such as domestic abuse, adolescent safeguarding, and mental health, alongside innovative youth-led initiatives and strengthened multi-agency collaboration.

Derek Benson (LSCP Scrutineer and Chair of the LSCP Forum), who had started in his role in December 2024, introduced the Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) Annual Report 2024-25, including report areas, new developments, progress of the LSCP priorities, key activities and outcomes from LSCP subgroups, training delivery and impact, partner contributions and strategic direction for 2025-26.

Councillor Mercy Umeh appreciated the great report. She asked about the LSCP’s coordination of work among families and children/young people of different cultures.

Derek Benson referred to the publication of a work earlier this year by the National Panel for Safeguarding related to “silent racism” and safeguarding children.  He emphasised the importance of local delivery and contributions from partner agencies in undertaking safeguarding work, and considered this should be embedded in everything delivered by a multi-cultural and diverse borough like H&F.

Anna Carpenter (Head of Safeguarding, CYPS) added that voice of young people and children had been central to the Partnership Grou and the LSCP Forum.  In maintaining a strong relationship through the youth voice service, there was representation from young H&F Foundation, and they had worked hard to ensure the “you said, we did” feedback loop linked with children/young people and Children in Care Council. This had helped the Partnership to understand the challenges of current issues faced by them. They were consulted on key issues for the Partnership and were actively involved in setting the new priorities for the LSCP.

Councillor Aliya Afazl-Khan thanked Mr Benson and officers for the thorough report and their hard work behind the data. She sought information about anti-racist practice and asked if disparities and outcomes were being tracked and reported transparently.

In response, Anna Carpenter noted that the LSCP priorities for 2025-2028 would be underpinned by a cross-cutting focus on anti-racist practice. The metrics would be reported in the next Annual Report.

Nandini Ganesh (Co-optee) expressed appreciation to the brilliant report.  She was concerned why education was not a mandatory partner as schools were best placed to judge whether there had been any safeguarding issue.

Councillor Afzal-Khan noted that H&F had already embedded education as a  partner and was concerned about their influence on safeguarding priorities and the anticipated measurable impacts.

Derek Benson said it might be a challenge to the Department for Education (DfE) to include education as a statutory partner due to diverse structure of the education sector and provide statutory guidance. Notwithstanding this, it was LSCP’s commitment to involving the education sector in its work, for example, the strong voice of education represented by independent schools when setting this year’s priorities.  He noted H&F colleagues had recognised the importance of this and hence leading the way along with other partnerships.

Anna Carpenter added that education had a strong representation in both LSCP Forum at strategic level and operational Partnership Group.  She said she was the Chair of the Partnership Group with representations from schools of early years and voluntary sector delivering a whole range of educational support mechanisms.  Anna added that the LSCP had developed an Education subgroup to help ensure H&F understand the core issues faced by different types of education providers and devise support measures to safeguard children on a day-to-day basis.  An example of the impact of having education as a key partner was when an education representative raised a serious concern at the Partnership Group about children vaping. This was escalated to the LSCP Forum where members reviewed it from a public health perspective. Subsequently a vaping strategy was put in place to address vaping locally.

Jacqui McShannon (Executive Director of People) referred to the review of Ofsted which had looked at the relationship between education and social care to ensure safeguarding was a priority for all types of education providers. She was confident that there was good communication among partners such that the concerns raised by a school would be discussed and explored by other education partners who shall provide advice as appropriate.  Jacqui stressed that the education sector was always seen as a key partner and the communication with all education providers had been very dynamic and on-going.

Sarah Sanderson (Operational Director, Children and Young People Services) referred to the tangible outcomes featured in the LSCP Annual Report. For example, a key safeguarding strategy on attendance had been worked out by engaging education partners who agreed to adopt an early intervention approach.  Jacqui McShannon added that on safeguarding concerns like attendance or children missing education, they were tackled by a joint approach through the collaboration of the Children Services and the partnership in order to better protect the children and safeguard their welfare.

In addressing the Chair’s concern about attendance, Peter Haylock (Operational Director for Education and SEND, Children's Services) clarified that the attendance rate for the 2024-25 academic year was 93%.  Among the remaining 7% of students, 17% of them were persistently absent, i.e. attending less than 90% of classes.  

Councillor Afzal-Khan expressed concerns about digital gap and online harm and exploitation and asked how LSCP addressed safeguarding issues arising from them.

Anna Carpenter acknowledged the challenge of online safety, noting it was a country-wide concern requiring on-going efforts. She said strategies were being developed to address online gambling and gaming which could lead to mental and financial issues for children and young people.  In addition to focusing on training on online safety, a working group was looking into support mechanisms for young people and their families in relation to online gambling.  She noted the need for strategic management of unique online safety themes and the importance of sharing information with partners both locally and nationally. Anna also mentioned the involvement of partners like Catch 22 which provided support around online safety and other safeguarding issues.

On the Chair’s question about any valuable dataset that were not accessible to LSCP, Derek Benson noted from different partners in health, economy and policing that they had abundant data that were relevant to the work of the LSCP.  He looked forward to generating these data into a meaningful and viable framework for setting safeguarding priorities. Derek was confident this might be put in place at next reporting.

Anna Carpenter added that obtaining local data for some partners had been challenging as it was often regional or national rather than borough specific. However, efforts were being made to localise data. The Chair said that with sophisticated technology in place, both system integration and data segregation could happen with an ask. She was interested to note the list of challenges faced.

The Chair said she understood that the police’s tactic of “Stop and Search” was an important part of the youth justice protocol.  She noted that unlike the Law Enforcement Team (LET) officers who were more stationary in H&F, the Met Police officers were relatively transient and hence not familiar about the locals.

Jacqui McShannon referred to an on-going pilot work carried out by another borough in partnership with the Met Police, focusing on safeguarding issues rather than just criminal aspects.  While there were safeguarding issues arising from young people being stopped and searched at a particular time of nights, considerations were given to addressing this carefully and sensitively with the Met Police to avoid impacting some members of the community disproportionately again.  As mentioned earlier, the result of the pan-London Stop and Search Audit done last year might help feed into a London practice in due course.

Sarah Sanderson added that findings and recommendations of a London-wide workshop held the previous week would also provide relevant updates. Cat Miller (Business Development Manager, LSCP) referred to the attendance of the Head of Early Help and Youth Justice and hers at the focus group for the stop and search audit. The stop and search audit findings, involving all 32 London boroughs would provide recommendations in next April.  Nevertheless, H&F had already implemented its local action plan based on its own audit findings.

Jacqui McShannon took the opportunity to express her appreciation to Lucy O'Connor who worked on a pilot arrangement by chairing LSCP Forum on top of her day job as the Superintendent Detective at Met Police.  As mentioned in the report, Lucy had created a very strong collaborative approach which included all partners equally. Jacqui also thanked Derek Benson for taking over the arrangement by playing dual roles as the independent scrutineer as well as the Chair of LSCP Forum.  Furthermore, she acknowledged the contributions from various partners.

Derek Benson clarified that while he would chair the wider partnership meeting, the actual designated safeguarding partners would chair the core meetings, ensuring compliance and effective use of resources.

RESOLVED

The Committee noted the report.