Review of the Safeguarding Partnership (WSCP)

Introduction

The Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP) is now 1 year old, and the safeguarding partners would like to invite you to participate in a review of the WSCP so we can make any necessary changes to ensure the arrangements both include and support you in safeguarding children and young people.

The new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements were introduced across the country following recommendations from the Wood Review of LSCB’s in 2016. The review concluded that LSCB’s were not effective as bodies to co-ordinate safeguarding activity and local services, and their role was at times confused and ill defined in local areas.

The review recommended that LSCB’s be replaced by new local MASA’s and this was enabled through the Children and Social Work Act (2017).

The Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP), our local MASA was introduced in September 2019 under the auspices of the three statutory partners of the Local Authority, Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group and Merseyside Police. The model was launched at a partnership event and is detailed in the model document published on the WSCP website.

The Review

The government has recently announced that Alan Wood has been appointed to review how the new MASA’s for local areas are addressing key issues outlined in the original Wood Review (2016). To contribute to the national review of MASA’s the three statutory partners are undertaking a local review of our own arrangements. Our WSCP review aims to:

• identify the strengths in our local multi-agency working and what we need to improve
• identify how we may need to change our local arrangements to ensure all agencies and professionals benefit from the safeguarding arrangements
• support and contribute to the national review of safeguarding arrangements

The local review will take the form of a series of short questionnaires. By contributing to the review professionals in Wirral will enable us to identify what is working well and what needs to change in the local partnership to enable us to have a consistently strong multi-agency response to safeguarding for all children embedded in practice across the borough.