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DSCP Newsletter - December 2024
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Welcome to the latest edition of the DSCP newsletter. We hope you find it useful and informative. Please contact us by email if you have any comments or suggestions for future newsletters (DSCPSecure@durham.gov.uk)
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Latest News from DSCP
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Multi Agency Safeguarding Arrangements
(MASA)
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In line with Working Together 2023 statutory guidance, Durham Safeguarding Children Partnership have revised their Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA). The MASA sets out how the safeguarding partners in Durham will work together with relevant organisations and agencies to safeguarding and promote the welfare of children and families. These arrangements will be subject to review and will be updated annually.
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Priorities
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Priority One: Domestic Abuse
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Domestic abuse, coercion and control affects so many of the families we work with, and we need to have confidence and curiosity in this area of practice. The Improvement Delivery Group are currently looking at “do we identify coercive and controlling behaviour at the earliest opportunity in County Durham?”.
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The DSCP have a number of multi-agency domestic abuse training courses available to support you in your understanding and learning. Please see Training.
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16 Days of Action also continue to take place until the 10th of December 2024. Multi agency partnership training is available, click on the link to sign up for the domestic abuse training listed below 16 Days of Action 2024
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Priority Two: Harm Outside The Home
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Exciting news that the 'Appropriate Language Guide' for child exploitation and abuse has now been published and is available on The Children's Society's website, please see this link below:
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The guide is available in both English and Welsh and has been co-developed with the CSE Taskforce and the National Association for People Abused in Childhood.
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Please do share this widely, as it will undoubtedly be useful for all practitioners, operational managers, and strategic leads who work to safeguard children from exploitation and abuse. The Children’s Society are currently offering regional learning sessions on appropriate language to coincide with the release of the guide.
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See the National Guidance section of this newsletter for further information relating to appropriate language.
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Priority Three: First 1,001 Days
Within a recent reflective discussion facilitated by the DSCP, a recommendation was to review the Bruising in Non-Mobile Children Protocol. A summary of the learning can be found on E-learning courses (Learning from Practice - 'Alex')
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The protocol has been updated to set out the requirement of all professionals to refer bruising in non-mobile children for assessment by a Paediatric Registrar (with specialist level 3 Paediatric Safeguarding Training) or Paediatric Consultant and Social Care.
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Priority Four: Mental Health and Wellbeing
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The Improvement Delivery Group have now completed the 5 stages of the learning cycle for Priority Four.
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The business unit have created a briefing for practitioners to explain what we have looked at and to give some helpful links to resources and guidance.
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The Mental Health and Wellbeing briefing has been uploaded to the website, it is an A3 document designed to be taken into team meetings, supervisions or to be used by practitioners to help them to understand what children and families have shared with us.
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Child Safeguarding Practice Review - Child Sexual Abuse within the Family
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On 26th November 2024, the panel published their national review “I wanted them all to notice” about child sexual abuse within the family environment. This highlights important learning to inform the practice and policies of safeguarding partners, strategic leaders, managers and all those working directly with children, young people and families.
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The review fieldwork analysed 136 serious child safeguarding incidents, and 41 related serious case reviews (SCRs) and local child safeguarding practice reviews (LCSPRs). It included discussions with 107 practitioners across England, one-to-one interviews with 2 of the children at the heart of these reviews, discussions with experts by experience, and interviews with 5 people who had been convicted for sexually abusing children in these reviews.
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To all the Durham Safeguarding Childrens Partnership
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Looking back over the past year, we know that without all of your help, support, enthusiasm and energy we would not have been able to achieve the things we have. Thank you all for your commitment to the changing structure, processes, and practice.
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Within the DSCP business unit we are excited for 2025, with a number of plans in place to continue to strengthen the way we safeguard children in County Durham.
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We hope everyone has leave booked in and enjoy some time with family and friends.
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Analysis of Safeguarding Week 2024
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The DSCP held our annual Safeguarding Week, week commencing 14 October with an overarching theme of ‘Inclusion’.
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21 sessions below were delivered by young people and practitioners from across the partnership and from further afield in Chicago. There were 1257 course bookings and 1021 attended across the week. This equates to an average of 48.6 people per session compared to 23.3 people per session in 2023 and 12.7 people per session in 2022. The evaluation feedback was very positive, but we would still love to hear your comments of how the sessions have impacted on your practice in the weeks following safeguarding week. Please email dscptraining@durham.gov.uk.
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The sessions that were recorded are now on our Me-Learning platform for your reflection or if you were not able to attend. Click HERE to register or login to your existing account. (please read the cost section on this page before registering for a new account).
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We would like to thank all the amazing facilitators from across the partnership for their valued input and delivery across the week, especially our young people who delivered an amazing session on ‘Connecting the Durham Family’. Also, a huge thank you to practitioners that attended, contributed, and inputted into the sessions.
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Voice of the Child and Lived Experience
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This document has been created for the multi-agency team to allow them to reflect and develop their skills when working with children and families. The purpose of this guidance is to set out a shared understanding and meaning of the lived experience and voice of a child across the partnership. It is the responsibility of all agencies to ensure that the ‘Voice of The Child’ is central to everything we do within our daily practice.
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Problems can arise when we lose sight of the needs and views of children. Hearing the voice of the child is an essential part of safeguarding. This guidance has been written to help practitioners to develop an understanding of the lived experience of the child, and what needs to happen to keep them safe from harm.
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The DSCP would like to invite you to take the document into group supervisions, reflective discussions or just spend some time reflecting on your own practice. We would love to hear how practice is impacted by any of our briefings or guidance documents. Please share any thoughts or reflections with the business unit (dscpsecure@durham.gov.uk) or contact Laura Bywater (laura.bywater@durham.gov.uk) if you have any thoughts to share.
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See the National Guidance section of this newsletter for further information relating to the Voice of Children.
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Keeping children safe, helping families thrive - GOV.UK is a policy that outlines the government’s commitment to keep families together and children safe and to support children to live in family settings when they cannot remain at home, including through kinship or foster care, rather than residential care. Alongside this, the statement sets out ambitions to fix the broken care market, and ensure the system is working effectively for vulnerable children and families.
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National Guidance and Useful Resources
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Contact us:
Council Offices, Green Lane, Spennymoor, DL16 6JQ
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Subscriptions
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