Annual Report 2023 – Introduction
Chapter Contents
- Welcome from the Safeguarding Partners
- Welcome to Wirral
- Highlighted Activity in 2023-24
- If Wirral had 100 Children
- Role and Structure of the WSCP
- Funding and Resourcing
- Communication
- Relevant Agencies
- Principles, Values and Behaviours
Welcome from the safeguarding partners
It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to our annual report covering the work of the Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership in 2023-24. The report provides a transparent overview of multi-agency safeguarding activity during 2023-24, and it reflects the hard work and dedication of all our partner organisations and their staff as they have safeguarded and promoted the welfare of Wirral’s children and young people.
2022 ended with a successful the Joint Targeted Area Inspection for Early help in Wirral, and 2023 began with the introduction of our new systemic practice model for working with children, young people and families. The year ended with another inspection of the Local Authorities children’s services, and publication of new Working Together statutory safeguarding guidance.
A key part of our statutory responsibility is to undertake reviews of cases where a child has died or been seriously harmed as a result of abuse or neglect. In 2023 we published two reviews – Ollie and Noah, and a summary of learning from these cases and other reviews is included in the annual report.
The annual report includes a number of case studies which illustrate both the breadth of safeguarding activity, and the transformative impact that effective multi-agency working has on children and their families. We will continue to publish case studies throughout 2024 and recognise those within our teams who have ‘been the difference’
The report also includes a review of our priorities and sets out our refreshed business plan for 2024-25, which includes how we will continue to embed the systemic practice model, as well as how we will support the education sector and introduce the new statutory guidance.
We hope you enjoy reading our annual report and that it gives you assurance about the strength and impact of multi-agency working to keep children and young people safe, and also those areas we will prioritise to be further strengthened.
We remain grateful to all of our partners and their dedicated front line staff for their support and steadfast commitment to safeguarding all of our children.
Welcome to Wirral
Wirral is a large metropolitan area covering the northern 60 square miles of the peninsula between the Dee and Mersey Estuaries. Wirral is well known for the high quality of its countryside and coast, and transport links to Liverpool, Chester and North Wales.
The borough is less well known as an area of strong contrasts. The predominantly built-up eastern area opposite Liverpool, forms part of the core of the Merseyside conurbation. Almost two-thirds of the population live within the urban area to the east of the M53 motorway, between the coastal resort of New Brighton in the north, to the entrance of the Manchester Ship Canal in the south. Birkenhead, located at the heart of east Wirral, is the largest town within the area, historically built around the maritime trades associated with the Mersey docklands, which have steadily declined since the 1960’s. The majority of statutory work for partner agencies is with families from the ‘dockland’ areas of Wallasey and Birkenhead.
The population of Wirral is 322,796 (ONS, 2018) with an economically active population of 155,300 (ONS 2018). The proportion of people of working age, particularly of younger adults, is at its highest in central and inner areas of east Wirral. The proportion of older age groups is generally larger in the west. The population is predominantly white British (90%) but significant ethnic minority groups exists, particularly Irish, Chinese and Polish.
There are approximately 67,508 children (0 to 17 years) living in the borough. Of the total population, this equates to 21% of the population being aged under 18. Of all children, 17.4 % live in poverty (Wirral Compendium of Statistics, 2021). The current rate of Children Looked After is 120 per 10,000 with 567 children in Foster Care.
In the latest Index of Multiple Deprivation, Wirral was ranked 77th most deprived authority out of 326. Although Wirral’s overall ranking for deprivation has gone down between 2015 and 2019, the number of LSOAs in the most deprived 20% of areas in England has increased by 10. This means that an additional 20,000 residents are now classed as living in deprivation compared to 2015 (IMD 2019).
Following a very encouraging recent Joint Targeted Area Inspection, the WSCP is looking forward to building on the strength of the partnership as all agencies work together to safeguard our children.
Highlighted Activity in 2023-24
2023 began with the publication of the Joint Targeted Area Inspection (JTAI) report for Early Help, following the inspection in December 2022. The purpose of the inspection was to test how effective our local arrangements were to support children and families who require early help support.
The letter of findings following the inspection was positive and highlighted four main areas of strength:
The inspection highlighted four main areas of strength:
- Senior leaders in partner agencies have a shared and well-developed vision for
early help in the Wirral. Staff across statutory and voluntary agencies have
understood and engaged with this. - There is a broad range of locality-based early help and family support services
available to children and their families that are making a positive difference. For
most children who receive services, risk is reduced and their day-to-day lives
improve. - A strong commitment to co-production and to engaging children and their
families means that both the overall range of services and individual children’s
packages of support are increasingly well matched to the needs of children and
families. - The integrated ‘front door’ that receives referrals about children who may be in
need, or require early help, does well in ensuring that children receive timely help
and support that is well matched to their individual needs.
As well as providing much to celebrate the inspection also highlighted four areas of improvement:
- How effectively the early help offer is further developed to ensure greater
consistency of access for children across the local authority area. - The proportion of children receiving early help who benefit from a coordinated
multi-agency plan to coordinate that support and to help ensure that it is as
effective as possible. - How well the early help needs of children with special educational needs and/or
disabilities are met. - The coordination of early help between education providers and the wider
partnership.
Following the inspection the WSCP developed an action plan to build on the identified strengths and to develop the areas for improvement.
During the year we continued to develop our model of systemic practice. This is the local multi-agency model for working with children, young people and families. Following development work with Warrington Council we introduced training for professionals in September 2022 and continued to deliver it throughout 2023, when we trained over 500 staff. The model was officially launched at our learning event in October 2023, and at the same time we launched our virtual Systemic Practice hub with guidance, resources and tools for professionals. We will further develop our expertise in the model into 2024 when we introduce accredited training in partnership with the Centre for Systemic Social Work. More detailed information about the introduction of systemic practice is included in the WSCP key activity chapter.
2023 saw the opening of the first Family Hubs in Wirral starting with the Seacombe Family Hub in Wallasey. Family Hubs are spaces where families can easily access a wide range of non-judgemental support to help them live well in Wirral. They bring together maternity services, health visitors, library and foodbank services and children’s centre activities.
Wirral’s Family Hubs make services easier to navigate and more joined-up, ensuring families receive the right service at the right time. The Wirral Hubs will serve families with children aged 0-19 (up to age 25 with Special Educational Needs and/ or Disabilities) prioritising ease of access, building connections and strengthening relationships. Family Hubs will also provide information and support to adults in those families, whether that may be for women’s health issues, or advice on lifelong learning and employment.
There are currently plans for 12 hubs to be set up over the borough during 2024 with eight of these now open in Bromborough, New Ferry, Moreton, Woodchurch, Seacombe, and three in Birkenhead.
Education is a priority area for the WSCP, and during 2023 we took steps to strengthen our relationship with the education sector and to make sure it is ‘front and centre’ in all safeguarding activity. To support the strengthening of arrangements the WSCP introduced a dedicated Education Safeguarding Committee, which is chaired by a local Deputy Head Teacher. The first meeting was very well attended and is now the single safeguarding form for schools, colleges and other educational providers from across the borough. The chair of the committee has joined the WSCP Executive, and this will help use ensure education as a sector is sighted on, and involved in local safeguarding practice.
Undertaking Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (CSPR’s) for cases where a child has died or been seriously harmed, and abuse or neglect is known or suspected, is a statutory responsibility of the WSCP. In 2023 the WSCP published two CSPR’s, one in respect of a two year old who tragically passed away at home. The family had had significant involvement with services over the years. The child very sadly was found unresponsive in his bed and passed away from natural causes. A second CSPR is also underway in respect of a 9 week old baby who was seriously injured in a co-sleeping incident, and also tragically later passed away. More detail, and learning from both cases is set out in the learning from case reviews chapter.
The WSCP is also currently completing a CSPR which will be published before Easter 2024.
The WSCP undertakes two types of audits throughout the year. The Section 11/175 safeguarding compliance audit tests how well organisations, including all schools are meeting their statutory safeguarding responsibilities. A summary of the findings for 2023 is presented in this report. The WSCP also undertakes a series of deep dive thematic multi-agency audits. These attempt to ‘shine a light’ on the quality of practice by focusing on a small number of cases. In 2023 the WSCP completed audits on the themes of children looked after between 0-5 years, parental substance abuse, pre-birth arrangements and child exploitation. The audits tell us that there is a lot of excellent multi-agency practice in Wirral, and families are well supported by a skilled and dedicated workforce. However, audits also show that the quality of practice can be inconsistent, and partner agencies should use robust quality assurance strategies to ensure practice is consistently good.
The Section 11 and section 175 audits also show the quality of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements across the partnership. The audits illustrate a very strong commitment to safeguarding, and where action is required in any partner organisation, this is addressed very swiftly.
In September a new Local Offer of services for children with special educational needs and disabilities was launched. The SENDLO website brings together information about the local services and support available across education, health and social care for families with children and young people aged 0 to 25. Co-produced with parents, young people and a range of partners the website was developed to raise awareness of the SEND local offer in Wirral, and signpost families to the support and services they need. In the first few months since launch, the website was visited over 10,000 times.
September also saw an inspection of LA children’s services by Ofsted. The inspection report was published in February 2024, and judges that local authority children’s services requires improvement to be good. Similarly to audit activity, the inspection highlighted a lot of outstanding and very good and effective practice, but also identified inconsistencies in the quality of practice. The LA will develop an improvement plan following publication of the inspection as part of its continual improvement journey. A more detailed report about the findings from the inspection can be found in the scrutiny report below.
In December 2023 the government published an updated version of its statutory guidance: Working Together 2023, and a new national framework for children’s social care. Both documents introduce a number of changes that will be required by safeguarding partnerships during 2024, and also introduce ways in which established practice can be changed. The WSCP will work with our partners throughout 2024 to make the required changes.
If Wirral had 100 Children
The graphic below illustrates some key statistics for children and young people in Wirral. Below it is a graphic first published in last years report, but still very relevant, which exemplifies the disparity that exists between local areas in Wirral. Narrowing the disparity gap remains a challenge for all agencies, and is something currently being addressed by the ‘breaking the cycle’ programme of strategies in Birkenhead.
Disparity Between the Most and Least Affluent Wards
The latest Office for National Statistics data about income deprivation (December 2022) reveals that Wirral is the 38th most income deprived LA area (out of 316). And, of the 206 neighborhoods in Wirral, 65 were among the 20 per cent most income-deprived in England. However, 27 neighbourhoods were in the 20 per cent least income-deprived in England, highlighted the disparity which exists across the borough.
In the least deprived neighbourhood on Wirral, 1.4% of people are estimated to be income-deprived. In the most deprived neighbourhood, 58.1% of people are estimated to be income-deprived. The difference between those two neighbourhoods is 56.7% and that is the internal disparity figure. Wirral has one of the widest internal disparity figures in the country, and closing this disparity gap remains a challenge for all partners.
Role and Structure of the WSCP
Role of the WSCP
The local multi-agency safeguarding system in Wirral is led by the Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP). Safeguarding children partnerships are statutory multi-agency bodies established under the Children Act (2004) as amended by the Children and Social Work Act (2017). Partnerships are responsible for establishing and ensuring the effectiveness of local arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The arrangements are led by three statutory safeguarding partners (the Local Authority, Merseyside Police, and the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board). The partners must establish a local model for safeguarding and determine how they work with other relevant agencies to keep children safe.
The local safeguarding system must ensure:
• children are safeguarded and their welfare promoted
• partner organisations and agencies collaborate, share and co-own the vision for how to achieve improved outcomes for vulnerable children
• organisations and agencies challenge appropriately and hold one another to account effectively
• there is early identification and analysis of new safeguarding issues and emerging threats
• learning is promoted and embedded in a way that local services for children and families can become more reflective and implement changes to practice
• information is shared effectively to facilitate more accurate and timely decision making for children and families
The WSCP’s safeguarding arrangements are set out in detail in the document below:
The partnership is responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of our local safeguarding arrangements and the annual report aims to provide a rigorous and transparent assessment of the performance and effectiveness of local services. It also aims to identify areas of weakness; the causes of those weaknesses and actions being taken to ensure improvements. The report also includes an account of progress made in implementing actions from reviews, lessons and the sharing of learning. Finally, the report sets out the partnership priorities for 2024-25 in our business plan.
Structure of the WSCP
The WSCP has a committee structure sitting underneath an executive group led by the three statutory partners. All of the committees and task groups have multi-agency membership drawn from across the partnership and are chaired by a senior colleague from a partner agency. The WSCP’s structure includes a Case Review committee who lead and maintain oversight of the statutory case review function.
A number of safeguarding children activities are completed on a pan-Merseyside footprint, and these include the child death function, oversight of policies and strategies, workforce development and a strategic multi-agency child exploitation group.
Members of the WSCP executive also sit on a variety of other statutory and influential boards and bodies including the health and wellbeing board, the domestic abuse alliance, the safer wirral partnership and the safeguarding adults partnership board.
A structure diagram for the WSCP is presented below:
Executive and committee led work is illustrated in several pages on the WSCP website where you can find out more about our activity:
WSCP Executive –
Membership: Local Authority children’s services, health economy (CCG, ICB), Merseyside Police
Partner Attendance:
- Wirral Local Authority – 100%
- Health Economy (CCG, ICB) – 100%
- Merseyside Police – 100%
Examples of Activity:
- wirralsafeguarding/thepartnership
- wirralsafeguarding/independentscrutiny
- wirralsafeguarding/learningevents
WSCP Case Review Committee –
Membership: Health Economy, Children’s Social Care, Practice Improvement Team, Merseyside Police, Primary Education, Early Childhood Services, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Quality Assurance Committee –
Membership: Children’s Social Care, Early Help and Prevention, Early Childhood Services, Youth Justice Service, Attendance Service, NHS Foundation Health Trusts (Wirral Community Health and Care; Wirral University Teaching Hospital; Cheshire and Wirral Partnership), Education Sector, CCG/ICB, Merseyside Police, Merseyside Probation, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, WSCP Lay Member, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Contextual Safeguarding Committee –
Membership: Children’s Social Care, Early Help and Prevention, Youth Justice Service, Youth Service, NHS Foundation Health Trusts (Wirral Community Health and Care; Wirral University Teaching Hospital; Cheshire and Wirral Partnership), CCG/ICB, Compass Team, Catch22, Contextual Safeguarding Service, Merseyside Police, LA Licensing, Safeguarding Adults Partnership Board, Education Sector, WSCP Lay Member, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Training Pool –
Membership: Children’s Social Care, Safeguarding Unit, Early Help and Prevention, Wirral Council Organisational Development, Forum Housing, Catch22, Contextual Safeguarding Service, Health Economy representatives, Domestic Abuse Hub, Voluntary and Community representatives, WSCP Training Officer
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Education Committee –
Membership: Primary schools, Secondary schools, Special schools, Post 16 colleges and providers, Early Years services, LA Education services, WSCP Education Officer
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Child Death Overview Panel (Pan-Merseyside and Isle of Man) –
Membership: Independent Chair, CDOP Manager, Health Economy representatives (including designated professionals, consultant staff, operational managers), Children’s Social Care Representatives, Safeguarding Partnership Representatives, Public Health, North West Ambulance Service, Merseyside Police, Lay Member, Education Representatives, Legal Adviser
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Neglect Task and Finish Group –
Membership: Health Economy, Children’s Social Care, Early Help and Prevention, Youth Justice Service, Merseyside Police, AgeUK, Adults Social Care, Safeguarding Adults Partnership Board, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
WSCP VAWG Task and Finish Group –
Membership: Domestic Abuse Hub, Merseyside Police, Children’s Social Care, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
WSCP Systemic Practice Steering Group –
Membership: Children’s Social Care, Practice Improvement Team, Systemic Practice Lead, Early Help and Prevention, Youth Justice Service, Merseyside Police, Health Economy Representatives, WSCP
Examples of Activity:
Statutory Safeguarding Partners
The Statutory Safeguarding Partners (the Local Authority, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board, Merseyside Police) have equal and joint responsibility for local safeguarding arrangements. The leadership role of the safeguarding partner is based firmly on the notions of authority to act and the accountability for action taken. Its purpose is to:
‘remove the blockages, bureaucracy and organisational self-interest that bar the route to the effective and efficient delivery and practice of multi-agency services to protect and safeguard children.’ Wood Report 2021.
The safeguarding partners in Wirral agree on ways to coordinate safeguarding services; act as a strategic leadership group in supporting and engaging others; and implement local and national learning. All safeguarding partners retain an equal and joint responsibility for local child safeguarding arrangements.
The statutory safeguarding partner representatives on the WSCP in 2023-24 were:
- Simone White, Director for Children, Families and Education, Wirral Council
- Lorna Quigley, Associate Director Quality and Safety Improvement, Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (NHS)
- Superintendent Matthew Moscrop, Merseyside Police
The safeguarding partners meet bi-monthly.
Funding and Resourcing
Working in partnership means organisations and agencies should collaborate on
how they will fund their arrangements. The three safeguarding partners and relevant
agencies for the local authority area should make payments towards expenditure incurred
in conjunction with local multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding and promoting
welfare of children.
The three safeguarding partners have a joint and equal responsibility to sufficiently resource the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and to ensure they are effective.
Figure 1 (below) illustrates the sources and amounts of income received from the safeguarding partners, education and the Probation Service. Income is also supplemented annually from charges made by the WSCP for the delivery of single agency training, mainly for the education sector. In 2023 the WSCP also received a grant of £34,000 from the regional Association of Director’s of Children’s Services to support our development of a new systemic model of practice.
In 2023 income totalled £269,847, with Wirral Council directly funding £139,936 (52%).
The WSCP’s expenditure in 2023-24 is shown in figure 2 (below). The WSCP is managed by a small team who act on the behalf of the safeguarding partners to deliver and test the effectiveness of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. The staffing costs of this team, plus expenditure towards lay member and scrutiny activity accounts for xx% of the total expenditure. Other regular expenditure items include operating costs (stationery, printing, travel, office costs etc), costs associated with delivering training and events -mainly the hiring of venues-, one off costs for systemic practice training, and the cost of running the website and other tools which support our activity.
Expenditure in 2023-24 totalled £305,520. This exceeded income by £35,673. The difference was funded by the Council from underspends in other parts of children’s services.
The WSCP Executive are aware that the funding of the WSCP remains in a precarious position, exacerbated by required savings across the public sector, and increased costs incurred by all organisations in the sector.
Double click on the images below for full page versions.
figure 1 – Income
figure 2 – Expenditure
Communication
The WSCP website
Key statistics:
- 400+ pages, including sections for professionals, children and young people, and parents and carers
- 43,000 visits (Jan-Dec 2023)
- 53,000 separate page views
- 3,500 average visitors per month
- 60% of visitors regularly return. 40% visited for the first time in 2023
- 96% of visitors from the UK. 4% visited from 45 other countries
- Top 10 pages: Training courses (18,000 page views); Concerned about a Child (10,000 views); Contextual Safeguarding and Exploitation (5,000 views); Case Reviews (4,500 views) Early Help (3,000 views); Procedures (2,000 views); Thresholds (1000 views); 7 Minute briefings (1000 views); Adverse Childhood Experiences (747 views)
WSCP Twitter
All safeguarding news items published on the WSCP website are also shared through our Twitter account.
- The WSCP has sent 3,867 Tweets
- The WSCP has 1,257 followers
- Our most re-tweeted posts were about the Big Learn safeguarding event in July 2022
WSCP Facebook
News items are similarly shared on the WSCP Facebook page.
- The WSCP has posted over 2,000 messages on our Facebook page
- The WSCP has 1,500 followers on Facebook
WSCP Instagram
The WSCP now uses Instagram to share images of posters, flyers, training adverts etc.
- The WSCP has shared 128 posts
- The WSCP has 200 followers on Instagram
7 Minute Briefings
One of the main ways that the WSCP shares important safeguarding messages is through its use of single side 7 Minute Briefings. All of our briefings can be seen on the website here. A few recent briefings from 2023 are shown below:
Relevant Agencies
The safeguarding partners are obliged to set out which agencies are required to work as part of the WSCP’s arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. These agencies are referred to as relevant agencies and have a statutory duty to cooperate with the WSCP’s published arrangements.
Representatives from relevant agencies are invited to attend the committees, task and working groups of the WSCP. Agencies are also invited to gather once a year at the WSCP’s annual learning event.
A full list of the WSCP’s relevant agencies can be found here, but in summary the list includes:
- all schools and colleges
- all health trusts and providers serving Wirral
- Merseyside Probation Service
- Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service
- All voluntary, community and faith organisations delivering services to Wirral children
- All charities delivering services to Wirral children
- NHS England
- North West Ambulance Service
- the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service
Principles, Values and Behaviours
The following Principles guide the work of the Safeguarding Partners and are promoted by all partner agencies:
- All children and young people have a right to be safe from abuse and neglect;
- All our work is underpinned by the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;
- Children and young peoples’ well-being and safety will be at the heart of all our work;
- All children and young people are unique and all our work will consider and address issues of diversity and vulnerability;
- Organisations and their staff have a shared responsibility to work together and safeguard children and young people and promote their welfare;
- Early Help and prevention strategies will be a centrally important aspect of our work
to safeguard children and young people; - The active involvement of children, young people and their families will be incorporated in our work.
To deliver our shared principles all professionals include the following Values and Behaviours in all they do to improve outcomes for children, young people and families:
| Value | Behaviour |
| Improving Outcomes for Vulnerable Children |
|
| Honesty and Integrity |
|
| Leadership and Partnership |
|
| Professionalism |
|
| Equality |
|
| Quality and Standards |
|
| Ambition and Innovation |
|
| Accountability |
|
To go to Independent Scrutiny click here
To go to the Journey of the Child click here
To go to Learning from Case Reviews click here
To go to Key Activity click here
To go to Multi-agency Working click here
To go to the Big Learn Event click here
To go to Progress Against Priorities click here
To go to the Business Plan click here
To go to the Glossary click here
