Our Partnership Functions

How we will work as a Partnership

Although all partners share the same vision for children, they have different remits and resources.

We believe that vulnerable children are best protected when professionals clearly understand their individual responsibilities and collaborate effectively.

Lewisham has a strong tradition of effective multi agency working and a shared commitment to improving services to children at risk of harm. All partners are committed to ensuring that this continues and develops further under the new arrangements.

We believe that children are best safeguarded when partners have a shared language and understanding, but continue to maintain different perspectives. Our challenge is to ensure that those perspectives are used to enrich our understanding of complex situations and lead to deeper learning.

All members of the partnership are committed to openness and honesty and will strive to ensure a balance of respect and challenge. We will resolve conflict through conversations with maturity and restorative approaches.

The LSCP will work closely with the Safer Lewisham Partnership, Lewisham Adult Safeguarding Board and Lewisham Health and Well Being Board to develop better integration and more efficient and effective safeguarding arrangements throughout the borough.

All of our activities and processes are designed to facilitate and drive action beyond institutional and organisational boundaries.

Although different professionals will have areas of specific, and sometimes statutory, responsibility we aim to ensure that there is no hierarchy of professional identity but instead an understanding of professional and cultural differences and how the range of backgrounds complement each other.

We want to ensure that legitimate professional challenge ensures that there is a true multiagency dimension to complex decision making in safeguarding children.

We know that safe and effective practice is rooted in purposeful quality assurance and challenge. Our goal is for staff in all agencies to feel supported to be part of an a self improving safeguarding culture.

Safe and effective practice is rooted in purposeful quality assurance and challenge and purposeful challenge is rooted in mutual respect, transparency and honesty.

When there are weaknesses in the system, our focus is on evidence and analysis, learning for the future, not blame and recriminations.

Funding

Partners and relevant agencies will contribute funding and services in kind to support the implementation of our priorities. In the first year these will be equal to the previous year.

The local authority will act as the host agency for funding, receiving contributions and making payments for expenses incurred on behalf of the partnership.

Role of the Scrutineer

Legislation and statutory guidance require us to ensure the effectiveness of our arrangements through scrutiny by an independent person. This role is designed to provide critical challenge to:

• Provide assurance in judging the effectiveness of services to protect children
• Assist when there is a disagreement between agencies
• Support the Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership to be a learning organisation

Independent Scrutiny will be provided by a single individual with a view to generating usable learning for system improvements.

The Scrutineer will attend Executive and Subgroups as an observer and will be free to read any documentation and attend any meetings that she deems appropriate to satisfy themselves of the effectiveness of the arrangements. The Scrutineer will publish their assessment as part of the Annual Report and will have regular meetings with the Mayor of Lewisham.

A Culture of Anti-Racist Practice, Respect and Challenge

Since everyone in the children’s workforce has a responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, the Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership has a remit to ensure that there is a culture and climate that promotes safeguarding among all staff. All professionals must acknowledge disproportionality and that we must strive to ensure that our practice demonstrates inclusivity, equity and is anti-racist.

As a partnership that is striving to become Anti-Racist, we acknowledge that challenging racism can be difficult; however, it is instrumental in ensuring that children and families to have access to services and are receiving the right support at the right time, which is child and family centred and demonstrates a relational trauma informed approach.

We recognise that no single professional can have a full picture of a child’s needs and circumstances and everyone who comes into contact with children and families has a role to play in identifying concerns, sharing information and taking prompt action in order to ensure that children and families receive the right help at the right time. We value the diversity of our workforce and the skills and experiences that the staff from different backgrounds and agencies bring.

Learning and Development

All of our processes and procedures will be designed to support learning that can be embedded consistently and coherently across agencies and systems. We want the Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership to be a learning organisation and to create a culture where workers’ desire to improve and learn is linked to front line practice.

The Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership is designed to be a dynamic and self-improving system with learning from audits, deep dives, feedback, surveys, learning reviews and an annual conference used to inform the development of a single and multi-agency training. Multi agency and inter borough training and learning events will be organised by the operational team who will also report on effectiveness and impact.

To be effective, practitioners need to continually develop their professional judgement and be aware of new and emerging threats. We will offer high quality multi agency training, but understand that every interaction, with families and colleagues alike, is an opportunity for reflective learning.

Our approach is both challenging and supportive. We want to learn from what works as well as look openly and forensically when the system does not work as well as it needs to.

To find out more about how we share learning and engage with partners please review our LSCP Communication and Engagement Strategy 2024-2027

Quality Assurance

Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children. A key aspect of this is ensuring that the quality of the multi-agency work being undertaken with children and families, is effective and we are able to measure the impact and outcomes of our safeguarding activity as a means to demonstrating that robust multi-agency safeguarding arrangements are in place and working.

Our Quality Assurance Framework aims to ensure that the partnership provides effective oversight to ensure high-quality standards across the safeguarding system, while also measuring the impact of outcomes for children and families.

For more information, please review our LSCP Quality Assurance Framework 2025 - 2027

Future Developments

Our commitment to learning and continuous improvement means that the arrangements as described in this document are not static.

Our principal priority is ensuring that our safeguarding arrangements work effectively for children and families.

We will consistently challenge ourselves to improve and will seek to learn from our own analysis and good practice in other areas,

We will formally review our arrangements each year and make changes whenever we believe that they will improve outcomes for vulnerable children.