Who are the Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership?
The Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership (SSCP) are responsible for safeguarding children in Somerset. This Partnership is made up of Somerset Council, Avon and Somerset Constabulary and Somerset Integrated Care Board, who have joint and equal responsibility to safeguard children and young people.
The key partners are the Chief Executive of Somerset Council, the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police and the Chief Executive of the Somerset Integrated Care Board, and they identify members of their agency to sit on the Executive of the SSCP.
The Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership incorporates working with all ‘relevant agencies’, who have safeguarding responsibilities under Section 11 of ‘The Children Act’ (2004), as described in ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ (2023). This includes education settings, the voluntary sector and specialist services.
Partnership Aims
The strategic aims of partnership are to ensure that effective systems are in place to promote the well-being of children and young people and safeguard them from harm. These include:
- Focusing on the impact of all forms of child abuse and neglect
- Learning, and the dissemination of learning, from local and national research, including case reviews
- Continued identification of indicators of the prevalence of all forms of child abuse and neglect in Somerset and assessing the effectiveness of progress in tackling these
- Understanding the perspectives of children and young people by asking for their views, listening to them and responding to them so that they know what has happened as a result
- Supporting and scrutinising the effectiveness of arrangements to reduce risk of abuse and neglect
- Improving and integrating performance monitoring for safeguarding arrangements and delivering the Somerset Children and Young People’s Plan
- Supporting communication and information sharing across partners.
Business Unit
The Business Unit is a small team to support the Somerset Safeguarding Children Partnership carry out its core functions, including the subgroups, learning reviews and delivering training.
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