Assurance over child protection services
Residents can feel assured that children are being protected in Powys a Social Services chief has said.
At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Health and Care committee which scrutinises Social Services, councillors were given an update on the action plan.
This is to implement improvements in how the council as well as Powys Teaching Health Board and Dyfed Powys Police are working together to deal with the abuse and neglect of children in Powys.
In February this year a report was produced which followed the Joint Inspection of Child Protection Arrangements (JICPA) inspection carried out by the Care Inspectorate Wales, Estyn, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue in October 2023.
The joint inspection found many strengths in all the services and made recommendations where it was felt improvements could be made.
Areas for development that were identified included the need for more multi-agency training, the need for the outcomes of a s47 enquiries to be reviewed.
A s47 enquiry is instigated when a child is suspected of suffering harm.
Senior manager for safeguarding and quality assurance, Holly Gordon, said: “The JICPA highlighted the need to give more consideration to support children where there are concerns of long-term neglect.
“In response to this multi-agency practice guidance and assessment tools were launched in April this year and this provides our staff with a model to monitor home conditions and to support improvements.
“This has been adopted by agencies in children’s and adults’ services, education, health and also includes resources to capture the daily lived experience of children at various stages of development.”
Dr Gordon added that a “thematic audit” had been done during the summer that found that practitioner visits to children both planned and unannounced happened at the same time of day.
Committee chairwoman, Conservative Cllr Amanda Jenner, asked how would the unannounced visits to children be improved and monitored?
Cllr Jenner said: “Are they going to be taking place at more sporadic times and days?”
Head of children’s social services Sharon Powell explained that reports written up following visits to children would now include a box to tick to say whether the visits are planned or unannounced.
“We will be able to pull out the data from these forms,” said Ms Powell.
Committee vice-chairman, Cllr Gareth E Jones (Powys Independents), said: “Has there been an improvement in the relations between children’s services and the other services, education, police etc.”
Head of children’s social services Sharon Powell said that the JICPA had: “Galvanised further development on multi-agency training and multi-agency auditing.”
The committee noted the report, and Cllr Jenner thanked them for the update.
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