Agenda item

Tracy Brown, Partnerships Team Leader – see recommendation

The Chairman returned to the chair.

The Partnerships Team Leader introduced the progress report as circulated with the agenda.  She explained that the council would, in the next 2 months, continue roll-out of the safeguarding declaration and would do so using the Learning Gateway.  It was the responsibility of Service Managers to ensure that the correct level of training was identified for staff and entered onto the Learning Gateway, which would act as a register of training for purposes of the Safeguarding Policy.  To ensure that this information was up to date, service managers would be required to review the entires for their staff every two years, which was in line with the section 11 audit timeframe of the Gloucestershire Safeguarding Children Board, therefore the next review was scheduled for November 2015.  The Partnership Team Leader would review reports on a quarterly basis to ensure that the number completing the declaration and undertaking the required training did not fall below 90%.  Should numbers fall below 90%, remedial action would be taken and should this not be remedied, then the issue would be reported to the Senior Leadership Team who would take appropriate action.

The following responses were given to member questions;

·         Once entered onto the Learning Gateway the system would flag which officers had not completed the declaration or training and reports would enable monitoring of any officers or teams who were repeatedly not fulfilling their obligations. 

·         The council did not consider it to be appropriate to mandate elected members to undertake safeguarding training, however, members were able to access the Learning Gateway and member inductions would be used to promote the issue to new members. 

·         Cases across the country had demonstrated that Taxi Drivers could have identified issues at an early stage and as such they formed part of the Child Exploitation Strategy and officers at the council were currently working with County Council colleagues.  Plans were also in place to approach Hotel reception staff just prior to race week in 2016 and make them aware of how to report any concerns. 

·         Taxi Marshalls had body cameras but she could not say whether the Taxi’s themselves did or indeed whether safeguarding training was going to be mandatory.  She would raise this with the Licensing manager and report back to the committee by email.

The Audit Partnership Manager confirmed that safeguarding featured on the Internal Audit plan for 2015/16 and the committee would be informed of any findings. 

The Corporate Risk and Compliance Officer reminded members that this issue featured on the Annual Governance Statement as a significant issue and asked, given that a point at which records had been improved had been reached, whether members were comfortable for him to annotate this on the AGS significant issues action plan.  The Chairman explained that whilst he was comfortable that the matter would no longer be flagged as an issue, but he was keen that the committee continue to monitor it.

Upon a vote it was unanimously

RESOLVED that having noted the procedures, the committee is reassured that the council can evidence compliance with the safeguarding training duties under section 11 of the Children Act 2004.