FFC Child Protection
Introduction
Establishing family help will result in a new approach to the way families access and receive support. This must run alongside a child protection system that protects all children from significant harm – inside and outside of the home. Children will have different needs and vulnerabilities and, as such, the type of significant harm they experience and the context in which this happens will vary significantly.
Our ambition is for a child protection system that is decisive, multi-agency with multidisciplinary skills, where practitioners have the expertise, experience, time and support to identify actual or likely significant harm quickly and take rapid and effective protective action. We will create a child protection system where the rationale for decisions are clear and focus on the needs and best interests of children, involving parents, family networks and others in a transparent and compassionate way.
Key Features
- Establish the Lead Child Protection Practitioner (LCPP) role, underpinned by clear skills, responsibilities, processes co-working with family help, supervision and case oversight.
- Operationalise a multi-agency child protection team (MACPT), secure dedicated resource across agencies and clarify its’ core functions.
- Improve parents’ experiences and engagement with child protection, including through independent parental representation.
The Approach in Wirral
There were three key parts to the reforms which we focused on: the development of the MACPT; the role of the LCPP; supporting families in the CP process.
Development of the MACPT
The MACPT is responsible for ensuring the response to significant harm is swift and sure. This includes ensuring there are adequate multi-agency resources in place and local processes are effective. The MACPT must provide assurance to the WSCP about the effectiveness of our partnership response.
In developing the MACPT in Wirral we split responsibilities between a strategic and an operational group (shown below). The strategic group contains senior leaders drawn from the four statutory partners (Education is considered a statutory partner in the Pathfinder) who meet in person once a month to set the strategic direction and lead on QA activity and resourcing of the response to significant harm.
The operational group contains representatives from each of the statutory partners and leads the ‘frontline’ response to significant harm. This group is led by the lead child protection practitioners (LCPPs) and leads the statutory response through strategy meetings, Section 47 enquiries, Initial and Review conferences etc. The operational group will oversee core group activity, the quality of plans, the impact of interventions, and will test new ways of working, such as a different response to significant harm from outside the home. The operational group, through the LCPPs reports to the strategic group.
A terms of reference has been developed for the Wirral MACPT which is included below:
The Role of the LCPP
The LCPPs are the LA based experts in child protection who lead all operational activity in child protection. The LCPPs are sighted on all new CP activity which comes through the Integrated Front Door or from escalating existing cases, and provide the immediate response required.
Wirral’s LCPPs have been drawn from our existing conference chairs, and in the test and learn phase we have recruited two LCPPs to work in one of our multi-discip0linary teams, where CP activity is the highest in the borough.
As well as leading CP activity the LCPPs have a regular presence in the MDT to provide consultation with social workers and MDT staff, and to co-work when needed cases in Family Help where there are concerns about escalating risk. The terms of reference for the LCPPs in the test and learn phase is included below. This document, and the MACPT terms of reference will continue to be revised throughout the course of the Pathfinder, but the latest documents will always be published on this page.
Supporting Families
Reviews tell us that families involved in the child protection process do not always understand the seriousness of the situation, or are confused by the process. It is not surprising that this happens because it is a complex process which can take professionals a lot of time to fully understand, so it must be extremely daunting for families.
Through the Pathfinder Wirral commissioned two pieces of work to create support for families in the CP process: parental advocates; family friendly guidance documents.
Advocates
The VCF sector through our Family Toolbox Alliance were commissioned to establish a team of parental advocates. The advocates attended a comprehensive training programme and all have lived experience within or supporting someone involved with children’s social care. The established advocacy service is offered to all parents, and some of the promotional materials are included below.
Family Friendly Guidance
A second commission seeks to develop family friendly guidance for all key aspects of the child protection process, such as what is a child protection conference? in a series of unambiguous guidance written in plain language. The guidance will be complemented with web based materials and illustrations, and will be available for all families involved in the CP process. We hope to begin rolling out the guidance in the summer of 2025, and examples will be published here.
Summary Presentation
to be added
Things we found Helpful
- Holding a multi-agency event to co-design what the MACPT would look like, including QA and data
- Recruiting LCPP’s from our existing conference chair workforce and linking them to the MDT’s
- Increasing our FGC capacity (and including FGC/FGDM across the continuum of need)
- Commissioning 3rd sector to develop family advocates with lived experience and to produce family friendly CP guidance
Our Top Tips for Embedding the FFC Partnership Programme (Child Protection)
- Co-design your MACPT with partners – it is a very complex part of the system design and requires multi-agency support
- Ensure your MASA is sighted on and overseeing the MACPT developments to provide the statutory security – include Education
- Look for opportunities to identify LCPP’s from your current skilled workforce – in Wirral we recruited from Conference Chairs
- Ensure your LCPP’s have a presence in your MDT’s
Feedback
Local Resources
Project Action Plan – Child Protection
MACPT LCPP Design Check List
Parental Advocacy Service
National Resources
The families first partnership programme guide
What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused
Tackling child sexual abuse and exploitation: update – GOV.UK
Children’s social care national framework
An illustrated guide to the Children’s Social Care National Framework
Keeping children safe in education 2024
Inspecting local authority children’s services – GOV.UK
Return to FFC Homepage