Multi-agency Safeguarding Arrangements
The shared vision of BCP Safeguarding Children Partnership is for every child and young person to be and feel safe, enjoy good physical, emotional and mental health, have pride in their unique identities, feel that they belong and have opportunities to thrive.
Following the dissolution of the Pan Dorset Safeguarding Children Partnership in July 2024, BCP Partnership was set up in accordance with Working Together (2023) statutory guidance to fulfil the statutory responsibilities of the three statutory safeguarding partners who have joint responsibility and accountability for implementing multi-agency safeguarding arrangements in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole geographical area.
Statutory guidance Working Together (2023) introduced the roles of Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSPs) and Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSPs) with clear roles and responsibilities for how they interact, lead, and deliver the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements for BCP. The three Lead Safeguarding Partners are:
- Chief Executive, BCP Council
- Chief Executive, NHS Dorset (Integrated Care Board)
- Chief Constable, Dorset Police
WHAT ARE THE MULTI-AGENCY SAFEGUARDING ARRANGEMENTS (MASAs)?
The MASAs recognise that strong collaborative leadership and timely decision making are crucial to the effectiveness of multi-agency working and to identify and address system issues. Protecting children from abuse, neglect and exploitation requires multi-agency join up and co-operation at all levels and local organisations and agencies who work with children and families play a significant and often statutory role when it comes to safeguarding children. This means:
- Having a clear, shared vision for how to improve outcomes for children locally across all levels of need and all types of harm
- There is a prompt, appropriate and effective response to a child who is identified as suffering or likely to suffer significant harm to ensure the protection and support of the child
- Organisations and agencies are challenged appropriately, effectively holding one another to account
- The voice of children and families combined with the knowledge of experienced practitioners and insights from data, provides a greater understanding of the areas of strength and/or improvement within arrangements and practice
- Information is sought, analysed, shared, and broken down by protected characteristics to facilitate more accurate and timely decision-making for children and families, and to understand outcomes for different communities of children
- There is effective collection, sharing and analysis of data, enables early identification of new safeguarding risks, issues, emerging threats, and joined-up responses across relevant agencies
- Senior leaders promote and embed a learning culture which supports local services to become more reflective and implement changes to practice, and have a good knowledge and understanding about the quality of local practice and its impact on children and families
The Multi-agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASAs) document sets out what the local arrangements are so partners and relevant agencies are clear about how they function to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and how they contribute to the arrangements.
Dispute Resolution and Escalation Policy
STRATEGIC PRIORITIES 2023-2025
The previous Pan-Dorset Safeguarding Children Partnership agreed strategic priorities for both BCP and Dorset areas for 2023-2025. The Lead Safeguarding Partners for BCP have agreed to continue to implement the agreed priorities, subject to review in November 2025.
| Priority 1: Violence and exploitation experienced by children and young people |
| a) Sexual violence and abuse, on-line abuse and exploitation |
| Why is this a priority? |
| In the Pan-Dorset area the largest proportional increase in suspected sexual offenders has occurred within male suspects of sexual offences aged under 18, having risen by 2.5% from 8.7% to 11.2% from 2019 – 2022. Individuals aged under 18 at the time of reporting the offence to police remain the largest cohort of victims, accounting for over a third (34.0%) of all sexual offence in the last 12 months. The Children’s Commissioner’s report on young people and pornography in January 2023 identified that pornography exposure is widespread and normalised – to the extent that children cannot ‘opt-out’. The average age at which children first see pornography is 13. By age nine, 10% had seen pornography, 27% had seen it by age 11 and half of children who had seen pornography had seen it by age 13. They also found that young people are frequently exposed to violent pornography, depicting coercive, degrading or pain-inducing sex acts; 79% had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18. Young people expressed concern about the implications of violent pornography on their understanding of the difference between sexual pleasure and harm. |
| Priority 1: Violence experienced by children and young people |
| b) Domestic violence and abuse |
| Why is this a priority? |
| – Each year more than 100,000 people in the UK are at imminent risk of being murdered or seriously injured because of domestic abuse. 130,000 children live in households where there is high-risk domestic abuse. A quarter (25%) of children in high-risk domestic abuse households are under 3 years old. 62% of children living in domestic abuse households are directly harmed by the perpetrator of the abuse, in addition to the harm caused by witnessing the abuse of other. In 2021-2022 9,477 domestic abuse-related crimes were recorded by Dorset Police up from 9,159 the year before. |
| Priority 1: Violence experienced by children and young people |
| c) Physical violence and knife crime |
| Why is this a priority? |
| Under 18s continue to account for the largest proportion of Public Place Violent crime victims, in the Pan-Dorset. In the last 12 months they represented 24.3% (1,875 of 7,715) of all victims. Victims aged under 18 at the time of the offence are slightly more likely to be a repeat victim (12.4%, 199 of 1,611). There 338 recorded knife crimes in the last 12 months and this is an 8.3% increase. There continues to be an increase in under 18s as both victims and perpetrators of knife crimes. Reviews have indicated that there have been on-going concerns in this area. Operation Landslide related to two 16-year-olds convicted of murder and both were in possession of knives and the victim died of stab wounds. |
| Priority 2: Children’s mental health and emotional well-being |
| Why is this a priority? |
| Child mental health remains a disproportionately high factor within referrals from the police and is the predominant concern in around 10% of submissions. This is also reflected within referrals from social care and health, as well as child attendances to local A+E Departments. There is an increase in both the volume, and complexity of mental health, following the pandemic. Multi-Agency planning is ongoing to review and improve local service provision and there is still a lack of appropriate accommodation for these children and young people. |
| Priority 3: Neglect |
| Why is this a priority? |
| Neglect continues to be a feature in both national and local reviews e.g., neglect featured in nearly 75% of the 166 SCRs examined for the period 2017-19. There is a continued need to ensure that all agencies are recognising and responding effectively to neglect. The Partnership recognises the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and poverty and the increase pressures on family life that can lead to neglect. |
The action plan that will sit underneath these priorities will be published in due course.
BCP Partnership adopts the principles of a trauma-informed approach to working with children, young people and families here. Toolkits have been developed to support practitioners apply a trauma-informed approach in their practice here
