Child Abuse Investigation Command (The Children Act 2004)

Report: 13
Date: 12 May 2005
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report provides an update on implementing the Children Act 2004 and the current impact assessment for the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

A. Recommendations

That this report be noted.

B. Supporting information

Overview of the new arrangements

1. On the 22 April 2004, Specialist Crime Directorate, Child Abuse Investigation Command (SCD5), presented a report on the Children Bill 2004, outlining likely implications for the MPS. The Children Act received Royal Assent on 15 November 2004 and statutory guidance is being prepared for incremental publication during 2005 and 2006.

‘Every Child Matters: Change for Children’

2. The following documents describe the evolution of government’s change strategy;

• ‘Every child matters’ (September 2003) and
• ‘Every child matters: next steps’ (March 2004)
• ‘Every child matters: change for children’ (December 2004)

3. The Children Act 2004 provides the legislative framework to enable and ensure effective implementation of the ambitious strategy outlined in the latter document. The Government have provided a Change Fund grant of £15 million to Children’s Services Authorities to assist implementation of local change programmes until 2006. Further funding will be made available for 2006/7 and 2007/8.

4. There are three main elements to this reorganisation of children’s services:

• Traditional social services, now split between the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills, are becoming two distinct services; adult social services (Department of Health) and children’s services (Department for Education and Science (DfES)). Children’s services will incorporate education, children’s health and children’s social services known as a Children’s Services Authority. For the purposes of the Children Act, each Local Authority will be known as a Children’s Services Authority (s63) with children’s services being the responsibility of a Director of Children’s Services (this could be the Chief Executive Officer or a dedicated post).
• Local arrangements for the reorganisation and delivery of children’s services will become known as Children’s Trusts, led by a Director of Children’s Services.
• Each Children’s Services Authority will have a Local Safeguarding Children Board, previously known as Area Child Protection Committees. Each Local Safeguarding Children Board will be accountable to a Director of Children’s Services and a dedicated Lead Member for Children’s Services who will have a particular focus on safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children across all agencies.

5. As police are one of the ‘relevant agencies’, chief police officers have a duty to cooperate with these arrangements (s10) and a duty to safeguard children and promote their well-being (s11).

6. The DfES has produced a useful schematic outlining the various layers to the Change for Children agenda. This is colloquially known as the DfES ‘onion’ and is a Children’s Trust in action:

7. At the centre of the ‘onion’, the core aim is revealed; to improve outcomes for children and young people in five distinct areas:

• Keeping healthy
• Staying safe
• Enjoying and achieving
• Making a positive contribution
• Achieving economic well-being

8. The outcomes ‘framework’ details expectations for children’s service providers under each strand and will be used to assess the agency’s performance under the new inspection regime (section 20). Inspections will be conducted both unilaterally (e.g. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)) and jointly (Joint Area Reviews), the latter being coordinated by the Office for Standards in Education.

Integrated front line delivery

9. The vision here is for children’s services to be delivered by co-located, multi-agency teams working in easily assessable locations such as extended schools and children’s centres.

Integrated processes

10. New processes such as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) and Information Sharing indexes will ensure that children at risk of social exclusion (i.e. at risk of failing to achieve one or more of the five outcomes) are identified at an early stage and, following an assessment of need, universal, targeted and specialist services are delivered in a coordinated fashion.

Integrated strategy

11. Services will be reorganised so that efficiencies are achieved through pooling resources (people and money). Under these arrangements services will be more integrated with joint commissioning of contracted services. Planning processes will include an annual Children and Young People’s Plan. Relevant partners’ strategic plans will be consistent with the Children and Young People’s Plan.

Integrated governance

12. This involves leadership, partnerships and clear lines of accountability within each Children’s Services Authority. The Director of Children’s Services and the Lead Member for Children’s Services will together provide the operational and political leadership necessary for effecting change and delivering integrated services that focus on outcomes for children. Through this structure, all agencies that comprise the children’s workforce will be held to account for their performance.

Implications for Police

Outcomes for children

13. Two outcomes in particular will have implications for police; ‘staying safe’ and ‘making a positive contribution’. The former is linked to safeguarding children and the latter is more about preventing youth offending. Police will be held accountable for relevant aspects of service delivery in these areas and will be expected to align policing plans to local Children and Young People’s Plans.

14. Police will be held to account for their performance in undertaking their duties under ss10 and 11. In particular, police will be expected to report on the extent our functions are ‘discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children’ (s11). This will require a review of all processes and policies to ensure this new duty is incorporated.

15. All police officers will be expected to have an awareness of their duty under s11 and will need awareness training. Additionally, a significant proportion of officers – those working in roles where they have regular contact with children (Community safety units, child abuse investigation teams, Safer Neighbourhood teams, etc.) – will need specific, multi-agency training. The DfES are about to publish multi-agency training materials for delivery by Local Safeguarding Children Boards. These materials are based on the DfES publication ‘what to do if you’re worried a child is being abused’ and the soon to be published ‘common core of knowledge and skills’.

Integrated front line delivery

16. We expect increasing pressure from partners for police officers to be posted to multi-agency teams (e.g. school beat officers in extended schools and SCD5 officers in Children’s Services Authority child protection teams), which will potentially create difficulties in managing officers working outside the police environment. We are already experiencing some difficulties managing officers working in Youth Offending Teams and any significant increase in this type of post would create additional supervisory and logistical complications. It would also take more officers away from core, front-line policing and local policing plans will need to prioritise multi-agency work with children to allow this to occur. The MPS policing plan could usefully issue guidance on multi-agency working of this nature.

Integrated processes

17. There are two new complementary processes that will impact of the MPS; the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) and Information Sharing and Assessment (ISA) initiatives.

• CAF – a framework for all relevant agencies to use when conducting assessments. Designated CAF assessors will assess children’s needs in situations where it is believed that a child may need help to achieve one or more of the five outcomes. A Common Assessment would typically take at least an hour, probably in the child’s home, and involve asking some fairly intrusive questions.
• ISA – Children’s Services Authorities will have Information Sharing Indexes (databases) accessible by relevant agencies containing core details of every child in that area. An Index will indicate which children are currently subject to a Common Assessment and provide contact details for practitioners currently working with a child.

18. The CAF could mean that all boroughs will need to develop systems and procedures for conducting common assessments. SCD5 currently process nearly 100,000 children ‘coming to notice’ MERLIN reports a year; all of these reports could require us to undertake a Common Assessment. This does not include many children who are young offenders, victims of crime, or come to our notice in other ways such as road traffic accidents. Additionally, the CAF will require designated assessors to monitor and review progress against the agreed action plan. Depending on the number of assessments required, this could create a demand for designated CAF departments in each Borough Operational Command Unit (BOCU).

19. ISA will require the MPS to review systems and processes, particularly Information Technology (IT) systems, to enable us to contribute relevant information to all local indexes. There will be consent and confidentiality hurdles to overcome and there is a risk that information sharing protocols will be developed differently across London Children’s Services Authorities. A significant number of police officers and police staff will need to access their local Index. It is not yet clear whether these Indexes will be structurally compatible (training implications), or whether they will be able to communicate across Children’s Services Authorities.

Integrated strategy

20. The emphasis for integrated strategy is on prevention and early intervention. This is about preventing children becoming socially excluded thorough early identification of need and ensuring children receive all necessary services to attain the five outcomes. There will be an expectation from relevant partners that the MPS move resources into prevention and early intervention activities, preferably within co-located or multi-agency teams.

21. Although it is unclear whether, or to what extent, police will be able to pool budgets, there is an expectation that all relevant agencies will pool resources to meet local imperatives. The MPS will be held to account for our performance by London Children’s Services Authorities against Children and Young People’s Plans. There is therefore a strong imperative for Children and Young People’s Plans to be constructed taking into account the pan-London organisation of agencies such as the MPS.

Integrated governance

22. As ‘relevant partners’ of Children’s Trusts (and Local Safeguarding Children Boards), police will be expected to provide representation ‘appropriate to the strategic-level nature of the arrangements. Representatives should be in a position to make decisions and commitments, particularly on service collaboration and funding, on behalf of their organisations.’ (para.88, draft s.10 guidance) For Children’s Trusts will require representation at Borough Commander level and at Local Safeguarding Children Boards, there will need to be representation at Senior Management Team level from the Local Policing Boroughs and SCD5.

23. Accountability for these arrangements will be through the local Director of Children’s Services and Lead Member for each Children’s Services Authority, supported by annual self-assessments and tri-annual Joint Area Reviews. This means that the MPS will be involved in 32 Self-assessment processes and at least 10 Joint Area Reviews a year; a requirement that will have significant management and resource implications.

24. The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) is likely to have a pivotal role in integrating governance for London. The draft statutory guidance for Director of Children’s Services and Lead Members says:

In relation to other partners, the Lead Member will ensure that their governing or executive bodies or boards are aware of their shared responsibility for improving outcomes [and] that information about the extent to which those responsibilities are being met is available. (para.5.3.1)

25. Action towards Implementation

• In consultation with Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) national leads, SCD5 and Territorial Policing Headquarters (TPHQ) continue to coordinate MPS responses to DfES consultations on the various aspects of the Children Act 2004 and the ‘every child matters: change for children’ agenda.
• Commander Smith (TPHQ) is now the designated ACPO implementation lead for the MPS and has authorised a programme of work to coordinate a dynamic impact assessment and implementation plan. Internal Consultancy Group and SCD5 are supporting this programme of work.
• Detective Chief Inspector Angus (SCD5) represents the MPS on the CAF working group and is engaged in consultation and negotiation with DfES, ACPO and others to ensure that expectations of the police are realistic. Current estimates are that 500 MPS officers will need to be trained as designated CAF assessors.
• Inspector Barry Scales (TPHQ) represents the MPS on the ISA working group and is engaged with DfES, ACPO, Directorate of Information (DoI) and others in reviewing the work of the three London Trailblazers. This work is linked with the MPS Information Sharing Programme, also sponsored by Commander Smith.
• Management Board and the MPA are being kept informed on progress (via previous and current papers) and are asked to provide guidance on the financial, training and resource implications.

Implementation timetable

26. Please see the attached timeline attached at Appendix 1 for incremental implementation of the statutory guidance.

C. Race and equality impact

1. The ethos of the Children Act is quite explicit, 'every child matters' irrespective of race or other social attribute. The key point is that the main area of vulnerability is age and all children should receive the services they need, including the need for protection.

2. All children must have access to the services they need irrespective of their race, culture or ethnic origin. This was an issue for Victoria Climbié and it is clear that she didn't receive the services she needed because of her ethnicity (at least to some degree). There was a rule of optimism being applied and professionals were using culture to excuse or explain concerning behaviour.

3. Whilst the MPS are not responsible for developing London’s Safeguarding Children Boards, police are statutory partners and have a responsibility (as do all other agencies) to ensure that race and equality issues are considered at a strategic level. Local Safeguarding Children Boards will have a quality assurance role for safeguarding children services. Such services will be benchmarked taking into account the specific needs of the most vulnerable children. Areas such as Child Abuse through Sexual Exploitation and Child Trafficking are difficult issues and the MPS will play a significant role in developing services to prevent these abuses across London.

4. Diversity assessments will necessarily occur locally and the London Child Protection Committee will play a vital role in collating and coordinating assessments for London. It is premature for the MPS to conduct a full race and equality impact assessment as we are still working to establish our position in the emerging regime. Currently, the MPS and London Child Protection Committee are working to learn lessons from Serious Case Reviews in London and are identifying predictive factors such as immigrant families, domestic violence and mental health. The MPS are already playing a significant role in ensuring that services across London meet acceptable standards and have established the Safeguarding Children Independent Advisory Group to assist strategic planning in a number of areas, including implementing the Children Act.

5. Children's participation is a key driver for the Act and both Children's Trusts and Local Safeguarding Children Boards are required to consult children and young people in developing services. Clearly, the most vulnerable children will need to be consulted (e.g. children with disabilities) and the experience of the MPS in embracing diversity will prove invaluable in shaping the agenda for change.

D. Financial implications

1. The transition to Children’s Trusts and Local Safeguarding Children Boards is likely to increase requests for the MPS to contribute financially from both Borough Commanders and SCD5. The extent of that contribution is still to be discussed during the implementation phase of the legislation and is as yet, an unknown quantity.

2. There is likely to be significant new expenditure in developing and delivering MPS training to take into account the new duties. More detailed work is needed to establish the likely costs involved and to what extent these could be defrayed by Children’s Services Authorities. This growth bid will be subject of a business case to the MPS Management Board at the appropriate time and also be part of the medium term financial planning process.

E. Background papers

None

F. Contact details

Report authors: Detective Chief Inspector Ian Angus, Specialist Crime Directorate, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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