Following the Suffolk Education Partnership’s Safeguarding Taskgroup and the requirements of “Working Together”, Suffolk Safeguarding Partnership has completed a review of its governance arrangements and agreed to the establishment of the Education Subgroup. This subgroup sit alongside the other specialist groups and reports directly to the Children’s Delivery Board.
Phil Mackay, CEO at Thedwastre Education Trust, and Matthew Cooke, Virtual School Headteacher, have agreed to co-chair for the first year.
The Education Subgroup had two planning meetings and two “official” meetings so far. We have established strong representation from across the sector and have agreed terms of reference as well as a plan for the year. The group has a really broad membership, with some excellent people amongst its membership. Matthew and Phil attended the Children’s Delivery Board to present on the Education Sub-Group. This has all the Chairs of all the other sub groups – there is a real understanding of the need to ensure education is properly considered in future. The Delivery Board includes the 3 statutory Designated Safeguarding Partners, so we have a direct line to them. Again, I think this is what is needed. I have since attended the MASH review workshop and other members of the subgroup have attended workshops on the SSP’s priority areas which are Neglect, Child Exploitation, MASH and Intra-familial harm.
At our meeting this week, we heard from the project manager who is overseeing the Families First Project, which includes the proposed integrated front door and changes to the referral process from a form filling exercise to a telephone conversation with an adviser who will create the case note and refer to the most appropriate team (e.g. Safeguarding or SEND). It is hoped that there will be a trial of this in the Lowestoft area in due course, before anything is rolled out further afield. The Education Subgroup has asked Jemma Lynch from Unity to be a member of the Project oversight team.
As the SSP’s Education Subgroup is now established and has a formal status within the SSP, the SEP Steering Group has agreed that the Safeguarding Task group will now be disbanded.