Multi Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA)

Our ambition is to establish clear, equitable, and shared safeguarding arrangements, embed a clear line of sight between strategy and practice, and test a greater strategic role for education providers, given the key role they play in children’s safeguarding and welfare.

Aims of Pathfinder:

Delivering an effective system of help and protection for children and their families is a multi-agency endeavour. We want to create greater consistency and accountability across all multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, so that leaders at the right level are making the right decisions for local children and families.

The DfE expect all pathfinder areas to implement changes set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children (GOV.UK, 2023):

Set out lead and delegated safeguarding partner roles, responsibilities, and joint functions across local authorities, health and the police.
Introduce a Partnership Chair to facilitate discussions, encourage consistency and provide a clear mechanism for escalation, underpinned by a system of independent scrutiny to provide rigour and challenge.
Test a greater role for education at strategic level, spanning early years and childcare to further education, and learn from existing practice at operational level.
Implement key enablers that support effective multi-agency working, system design, and development.

What is a Safeguarding Children Partnership?

Safeguarding Partnerships support and enable local organisations and agencies to work together in a system where:

there is 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 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 to understand outcomes for children and identify new safeguarding risks or emerging issues
senior leaders promote and embed a learning culture which supports local services to become more reflective and implement changes to practice
senior leaders have a good knowledge and understanding about the quality of local practice and its impact on children and families

Newly Established Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership

We are excited to announce the official launch of the refreshed and newly established Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership, a collaborative initiative dedicated to ensuring the safety and well-being of children and young people across Warwickshire. This new partnership marks a significant step forward in our shared commitment to protecting the most vulnerable members of our community.

The purpose of Multi Agency Safeguarding Arrangements is to ensure that organisations and agencies are clear about how they will work together to safeguard children at a local level. This will be the newly established Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership.

The Service Mananger for the Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership is Ramandeep Sandhu - ramandeepsandhu@warwickshire.gov.uk.

The partnership will be multi-agency led with Children's Service, Health, Police and Education to ensure clear leadership, accountability, and coordination among partners. There will be a Lead Safeguarding Partner (setting the strategic vision and priorities) and Delegated Safeguarding Partner (operational delivery of the priorities) representatives for each of the four agencies.

The Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership brings together the three statutory safeguarding partner agencies —Warwickshire County Council, Warwickshire Police, the Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board, as well as introducing Education as a fourth safeguarding partner.

As stated in Working Together 2023, Strong, joined-up leadership and clear accountability is critical to effective multi-agency safeguarding, bringing together the various organisations and agencies. In the newly established partnership. It is important that the head of each safeguarding partner agency plays an active role in these arrangements. These are known as the Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSP), and they will work together to:

Set the strategic plan and priorities for the safeguarding arrangements
Have joint and equal responsibility for safeguarding children and young people
Speak with authority on behalf of their agency
take decisions on behalf of their organisation or agency and commit them on policy, resourcing, and practice matters
hold their own organisation or agency to account on how effectively they participate and implement the local arrangements
Act as a team to protect Warwickshire children and young people

The Warwickshire LSPs are:

Police: Debbie Tedds, Chief Constable, Warwickshire Police
Local Authority: Monica Fogarty, Chief Exec, Warwickshire County Council
Health: Phil Johns, Chief Executive, Coventry & Warwickshire Integrated Care Board
Education: Head teacher TBC

LSPs are responsible for delegating functions to the four identified Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSPs) who will work together to:

Implement operational delivery of the strategic vision set out by the LSPs
Show leadership in delivering the multi agency safeguarding arrangements
Provide evidence about the quality/performance of multi-agency practices including support and challenge from the Independent Scrutineer
Identify and anticipate new challenges and escalate issues at the earliest opportunity
Act as a team

The Warwickshire DSPs are:

Police: Jill Fowler, Detective Superintendent, Warwickshire Police
Local Authority: Nigel Minns, Executive Director for Children & Young People, Warwickshire County Council
Health: Ellie Monkhouse, Chief Nursing Officer, Coventry & Warwickshire Integrated Care Board
Education: Johnny Kyriacou, Director of Education, Warwickshire County Council