Agenda item

(Report by Mrs S Hohler, Cabinet Member for Children, Families and Education and Mrs R Turner, Managing Director for Children, Families and Education)

(1)         The Board considered a report that presented the Kent Safeguarding Children Board Annual Report for 2009/10 and Business Plan for 2010 – 2013 and had previously been debated at the County Council meeting on 14 October 2010.

(2)         Mrs Whittle opened the discussion by advising the Board that she had recently visited a Special School in Maidstone where she was approached regarding the Form B she then referred Members to page 41 of the report that covered ‘Child Death Review Processes’.  The concerns were that the Form B, that the school had to complete, was cold and insensitive.  Mrs Whittle suggested that the schools should be encouraged to have support from a member of the Safeguarding Team when completing the form.  Ms P Davies said that the staff at the Special Schools knew the children very well and were in the best position to complete the forms but support was offered in filling in the forms.

(3)         In reply to a question, Ms P Davies advised that there had been 94 child deaths in Kent the previous year that covered a range of issues including to accidents. Every death had to be looked into. She agreed that the forms were bureaucratic, there were 15 forms in total from the Department of Education but they were required for statutory returns.   An expert Advisory Group produced the detail of each case.  She stated that very few cases were deemed to be preventable deaths.  If a death was preventable such as in the case of an accident, measures were put in place to reduce the risks of it happening again.

(4)         In response to concerns that not all the agencies were signed up to working together, Ms P Davies advised that the Kent Safeguarding Children’s Board was the best way of making sure agencies worked together.  Mr D Worlock, Chairman was aware of this.  Each member of the Board was required to share their agency’s inspection reports and improvement plans.  Mrs Hohler advised that Ms Turner, CFE Managing Director was working on this and was optimistic following the feed back she had received from representatives such as health that considered reducing the 23 districts to 12 was better with a Preventative Services Manager appointed to each and would reduce duplication.

(5)         Mrs Whittle advised that following a visit to a special school she was made aware of 3 multiservice hubs in special schools based at Ashford, Sittingbourne and Thanet where the health authority building was on the same site as the school.  She suggested that if the health service was on site it would be easier to integrate other agencies.  Ms H Davies concurred that this was an excellent example of the local authority and health service working together in the Multi Agency Service Hub (MASH) and reduced the need for children having to travel to appointments.

(6)         RESOLVED that the report be noted, with thanks