NYSCP

What is North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP)?

The local Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements for North Yorkshire are known as the North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP).

The purpose of NYSCP is to support and enable those who work with children, young people and families to work together safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people, this includes:

Providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge
protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online
preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development
ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
promoting the upbringing of children with their birth parents, or otherwise their family network through a kinship care arrangement, whenever possible and where this is in the best interests of the children
taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes in line with the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework.

We do this by providing and supporting and enabling local organisations and agencies to work together at all levels in a system where:

Collaborate: Our partnership relationships are key to ensuring children in North Yorkshire are safe, happy, healthy and achieving. The Strength in Relationships practice model supports partners to develop a shared vision for how services work together to deliver shared mutually agreed goals. Partners share practice, information and learning sharing and have constructive debate ensuring children and young people’s voice is at the heart of all developments in practice.
Learn: We use evidence from our work with children and young people to inform and evaluate what is and isn’t working well across the partnership. We promote and embed a culture of working together, learning together, and consideration of multiple professional perspectives. We actively seek out opportunities for the early identification and analysis of emerging safeguarding issues both nationally and locally.
Resource: Our partners are our biggest resource and together we are ambitious about helping support and protect children in North Yorkshire. By building strong relationships and drawing on expertise from a wide range of agencies we can ensure children and their families have access to resources that support their health, development and ambitions.
Include: We create an inclusive culture where diversity is celebrated, differing views are heard and children and young people are active in coproducing policies that impact on their lives.
Mutual Challenge: Leaders hold each other and their teams to account in respectful ways that work towards common goals. Constructive challenge is recognised as vital with independent judgement/opiions as an opportunity to learn and develop.

Who are the three Statutory partners?

The three statutory safeguarding partners are responsible for the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements in North Yorkshire they consist of:

Director of Children and Young People, North Yorkshire Council (NYC),
Chief Nurse of the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB)
Assistant Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police (NYP).

What is a relevant agency?

A relevant agency is any organisation or agency that the safeguarding partners consider to be required to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. A list of organisations that meet the criteria is set out in regulations. These can include schools, early years and education providers, voluntary, community and social enterprise), sports clubs and may more.

Multi Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA)

North Yorkshire, the three statutory safeguarding partners combined with the wider safeguarding partners and relevant agencies continue to work together and have agreed Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA), which sets out how the requirements of Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) will be achieved. NB: Due to the amendment of Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 the Multi-agency Safeguarding Arrangements are in the process of being updated – due to be released December 2024

NYSCP operates through a subgroup model made up of partners who develop policy, procedures and practice guidance resources and training for professionals and volunteers who work with children, young people and families in North Yorkshire.

Independent Scrutiny:

NYSCP have an independent Scrutineer whose role is to drive continuous improvement and provide assurance that arrangements are working effectively for children, families, and practitioners. It should also consider learning from local child safeguarding practice reviews, national reviews and thematic reports. The independent scrutineer or scrutiny group should be able to demonstrate knowledge, skills and expertise in the area being scrutinised and consequently add value to the work of local agencies

Child Deaths:

The death of a child is a devastating loss that profoundly affects all those involved. The process of systematically reviewing the deaths of children is grounded in respect for the rights of both children and their families, with the intention of learning what happened and why, and preventing future child deaths.

Child death review partners must make arrangements to review all deaths of children normally resident in the local area and, as indicated, of any non-resident children who have died in their area. This should be done via a Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP).

For more information about the child death process in North Yorkshire and the role of the CDOP.

Sharing Learning:

Part of the role of North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership is to carry out reviews of individual cases, undertake multi-agency audits, and provides briefings on specific safeguarding issues. It is important that this is captured and vital that it is then shared with professionals who work with children and young people to improve practice when it comes to keeping children safe, happy, healthy and achieving.

Safeguarding Practice Reviews:

Sometimes a child suffers a serious injury or death as a result of abuse or neglect. Understanding not only what happened but also why it happened can help improve our response in the future.

The purpose of serious child safeguarding case reviews, at local and national level, is to identify improvements that can be made to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. They should seek to prevent or reduce the risk of recurrence of similar incidents. They are not conducted to hold individuals, organisations, or agencies to account. Sharing from the learning of these reviews is vital for all practitioners to reflect on and ensure practice is continually evolving in the best interest of children, young people and families.

Multi Agency Deep Dive Audits:

North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership undertakes a series of multi-agency deep dive audits throughout the year. Each audit explores a different safeguarding theme and the multi-agency responses to it. The findings from the audit are collated and shared by the partnership business unit. These include highlighting good practice, areas for development, actions, next steps and further areas of development.

Section 11 Audit:

Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 places duties on a range of organisations and individuals to ensure their functions, and any services that they contract out to others, are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

One of the roles of the North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP) and North Yorkshire Safeguarding Adult Board (NYSAB) is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements and to advise organisations on ways to improve.

Schools Audit:

The biennial mandatory NSYCP school safeguarding audit arrangements relates to all schools across North Yorkshire including maintained, academies, free and independent schools. Education providers, including multi-academy trusts, have a responsibility to play their full part in local safeguarding arrangements, including where their footprint extends across several local authority areas. This includes, but should not be limited to, responding to safeguarding audits of quality and compliance, as requested by the local authority and/or local safeguarding partners. (Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023, p.34).

Multi Agency Strategies:

There are currently three multi-agency strategies in North Yorkshire which lay out the vision and responsibility all services in North Yorkshire who work with children and young people.

Being Young in North Yorkshire

Our overarching strategy is Being Young in North Yorkshire, which sets out the vision,

shaped by feedback from children and young people living in North Yorkshire and sets out our four key themes of children and young people having:

a safe life
a happy family life
a healthy life, and
achieving in life

Early Help Strategy

The Early Help Strategy ensures the effective delivery of the key principles defined in Working Together to Safeguard Children which we all, as partners have a statutory responsibility to co-operate with and contribute to.

At the heart of the strategy is the practice model used throughout North Yorkshire already. It builds on families’ strengths, keeps language simple, and is clear about goals and progress. This means we do things with children and families, not to them, whilst using the family and wider network of friends and others to develop and support plans.

Our joint ambition is to make sure children and you people receive the right support at the right time and place, by the right person. We want partners and practitioners to feel well supported, knowledgeable and able to meet the needs of children and families as early as possible.

MACE and Contextual Safeguarding Strategy

NYSCP’s vision for the MACE and Contextual Safeguarding arrangements is for all children in North Yorkshire who are being exploited and/or are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse are effectively identified and protected by services which are delivered in a coordinated and informed way that consistently responds to the harm and risks and improves the outcomes for our children, their families and the wider community.

The strategy sets our four priorities to tackle child exploitation in North Yorkshire

Prepare
Prevent
Protect
Pursue

How does NYSCP operate?

What is the function of the NYSCP Business Unit?

The NYSCP Business team is there to support all safeguarding partners by helping to coordinate multi-agency working.

The Business Unit team consist of:

Hannah Ellingworth, NYSCP Manager
Haydn Rees Jones, Policy and Development Officer
Kathryn Morrison, Policy and Development Officer, VEMT
Stephanie Freeth, Policy and Development Officer
Alison Brunton, Child Death Review Officer
Kirsty Tuley, Leadership Support Officer

Yearly Reports:

As referenced in Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) Safeguarding partners must jointly report on the activity they have undertaken in a 12-month period. The focus of these reports should be on multi-agency priorities, learning, impact, evidence, and improvement. Full information on what the reports should include can be found in Working Together (2013), page 40, para. 106. (See Who We Are & What We Do for our annual reports)

The NYSCP Website:

The NYSCP website is the hub of safeguarding knowledge and information for professionals and volunteers across North Yorkshire. Here, you will find up to date a relevant resources, guidance and training and learning to enhance your practice. We also have resources and information designed for parents and carers, children and young people and local communities, (see safeguardingchildren.co.uk)

Key areas for professionals include:

Forms for Professionals and Tools – key forms for referral and tools to support the work that is carried out to support children and families.
Learning for Professionals
Procedures, practice Guidance and One Minute Guides: key multi-agency safeguarding procedures, practice guidance and one minute guides. They have been designed to support all practitioner who are working with children , young people and their families across North Yorkshire.

Contact us:

The NYSCP business unit are keen to hear from partners with regards to any way we can improve communications and the resources and information we share. If you have any comments or feedback, please get it touch with us via email:

nyscp@northyorsk.gov.uk

Keeping in touch:

For General Enquiries – nyscp@northyorks.gov.uk – NYSCP is not the appropriate team to contact if you have a safeguarding concern about a child – click here to view the worried about a child page.

You can keep in touch with us via our social media channels:

X.com: NYSCP (@NYSCP1)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nyscp1
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nyscp/
Youtube: www.youtube.com/@nyscp

You can also subscribe to our free monthly e-bulletin here:

NYSCP e-Bulletin

Last Updated: 25 September 2024

North Yorkshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (NYSCP)