1. Introduction

AMENDMENT

This chapter was updated in December 2024.

1.1 Introduction

1.1.1 These procedures have been produced and approved by Knowsley Safeguarding Children Partnership (KSCP), and should be made available to any agency or practitioner working, in a paid or voluntary capacity, with children and families or with adults who are parents or carers in Knowsley. All staff should be made aware that these procedures must be followed, just as their own individual agency procedures, which complement KSCP procedures, must be followed.
1.1.2 This safeguarding manual has been written in line with government guidance, including: "Working Together to Safeguard Children, a guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children" and "What to do if you're worried a Child is being abused" (2015).
1.1.3 The procedures is also informed by the Children Acts 1989 & 2004, and the Adoption & Children Act 2002 (see also Adoption Statutory Guidance) which provide a comprehensive framework for the care and protection of children.
1.1.4

The Children Act 2004, provided the legal 'backbone' for the programme of reform laid out in the Green Paper "Every Child Matters" (2003) which stated that all children deserve to achieve their full potential. The Children Act 2004 identifies the 5 areas that are key to achieving children's well-being:

  • Be healthy;
  • Stay safe;
  • Enjoy and achieve;
  • Make a positive contribution; and
  • Achieve economic well-being.

Although Safeguarding Children is associated with the stay safe outcome, it should have an effect upon all of the other areas of the Outcomes Framework.

1.1.5 The Early Help Assessment (EHA) promotes multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working at an early stage in order to identify and provide services to children in need of additional support before their needs escalate.
1.1.6 This manual details the processes to be followed in circumstances where it is necessary to assess the need to protect a child from the risk of Significant Harm. It does not cover other responses to Children in Need. (For responses to children in need follow Knowsley's Children in Need Protocol).

1.2 The Concept of Safeguarding

1.2.1

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purpose of this manual as:

  • Protecting children from maltreatment;
  • Preventing impairment of children's health or development;
  • Ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and
  • Undertaking that role so as to enable those children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully.
1.2.2 Safeguarding Children should therefore not be seen as a separate activity from promoting their welfare, as safeguarding or protecting a child from Significant Harm is an aspect of promoting a child's welfare.

1.2.3

 Put another way, all children provided with services and/or subject of an assessment by the Knowsley Early Help and Children’s Social Care Department. Some of these children will be suffering Significant Harm or likely to suffer Significant Harm, and therefore one of the needs of such children will be protection from abuse or neglect.
1.2.4 Effective Child Protection is essential as part of wider work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. However, all agencies and individuals should aim to proactively safeguard and promote the welfare of children so that the need for action to protect children from Significant Harm is reduced.
1.2.5 The threshold that triggers compulsory intervention in family life is when a child is thought to have suffered, or be at risk of suffering, Significant Harm. The term 'Significant Harm' is defined in the Children Act 1989. This is in order to give some clarity to thresholds of intervention. It is acknowledged that abuse is the action and harm is the consequence. Therefore it is harm to children that needs to be measured as part of any assessment. (See Section 3.1, The Concept of Significant Harm)