Meet our Lead & Delegated Safeguarding Partners

Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSP)
The purpose of the WSCP is to ensure that organisations and agencies are clear about how they will work together to safeguard children at a local level. To do so successfully, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2023’ outlines the responsibility of the head of each safeguarding partner (or Lead Safeguarding Partner) within the Police, Local Authority and Integrated Care Board having an active role and agreeing joint and shared responsibility of the arrangements whilst establishing Education as a fourth safeguarding partner.

The WSCP are proud to be be multi-agency led with Children's Services, Health, Police, and Education to provide strategic direction, resources, and oversight to ensure safeguarding and welfare practices are maintained to a high standard across the county. The Lead Safeguarding Partners are:

The LSPs role is to:  

• Set the strategic direction, vision, and culture of Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP), including agreeing and reviewing shared priorities and the resource required to deliver services effectively. 
• Lead their organisation’s individual contribution to the shared priorities, ensuring strong governance, accountability, and reporting mechanisms to hold their delegates to account for the delivery of agency commitments. 
• Review and sign off key partnership documents: published multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, including plans for independent scrutiny, shared annual budget, yearly report, and local threshold document. 
• Ensure multi-agency arrangements have the necessary level of business support, including intelligence and analytical functions, such as an agreed data set providing oversight and a robust understanding of practice. 
• Ensure all relevant agencies, including education settings, are clear on their role and contribution to multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
• Commit their agency to the agreed actions of the WSCP; 
• Hold their agency and each other to account for the effective delivery of the arrangements; 
• Act as a team, as opposed to a voice for their agency alone; 
• Have arrangements in place to delegate functions to the Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSPs) including support and challenge from the Independent Scrutineer; 
• Provide shared oversight of learning from independent scrutiny, serious incidents, local child safeguarding practice reviews, and national reviews, ensuring recommendations are implemented and have a demonstrable impact on practice;
• As outlined in Working Together, promote and embed a learning culture;
• Ensure all relevant agencies, including education settings, are clear on their role and contribution to multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

Delegated Safeguarding Partners (DSP) 

The Delegated Safeguarding Partners are:

The DSPs are responsible for:  

• Delivery and monitoring of WSCP’s priorities and procedures to protect and safeguard children in Warwickshire, in compliance with published arrangements and thresholds;
• Close partnership working and engagement with education (at strategic and operational level) and other relevant agencies, allowing better identification of and response to harm;
• The implementation of effective information sharing arrangements between agencies, including data sharing that facilitates joint analysis between partner agencies;
• Delivery of high-quality and timely rapid reviews and local child safeguarding practice reviews, with the impact of learning from local and national reviews and independent scrutiny clearly evidenced in yearly reports;
• The provision of appropriate multi-agency safeguarding professional development and training;
• Seeking of, and responding to, feedback from children and families about their experiences of services and co-designing services to ensure children from different communities and groups can access the help and protection they need.

Independent Scrutineer 

The Independent Scrutineer is: 

As outlined in Working Together 2023, the Partnership has an Independent Scrutineer to provide independent, rigorous, and effective scrutiny of the safeguarding arrangements within the Warwickshire Safeguarding Children Partnership. The Independent Scrutineer will challenge and support safeguarding partners and relevant agencies to ensure that safeguarding practices are effective and continuously improving, with a strong focus on ensuring that children and families are at the heart of all arrangements.

The Independent Scrutineer will aim to:

• Provide robust and objective scrutiny of the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements.
• Ensure that safeguarding partners and agencies are fulfilling their statutory duties and responsibilities.
• Assess the effectiveness of quality assurance mechanisms and ensure learning from local and national reviews is implemented across the WSCP.
• Promote the voice of children and families as a key element of scrutiny, ensuring their feedback is integral to shaping practice and policy.
• Support the development of strong, transparent, and accountable multi-agency working, fostering effective communication and collaboration among partners.
• Contribute to continuous improvement in safeguarding practices by providing constructive challenge and identifying areas for growth.