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Safeguarding

NHS North West London (NHS NW London) Safeguarding Team

NHS NW London is fully committed to its responsibility for protecting and safeguarding adults, children and young people. Our principal philosophy is that safeguarding is everybody’s business and all staff will respond and act to raise safeguarding concerns and address any emerging issues.

Safeguarding adults, children and young people involves providing support, promoting welfare, and keeping people safe from abuse or neglect.

Safeguarding children and adults at risk of abuse is a statutory requirement and part of the core business for NHS NW London (NHS NW London replaced North West London Clinical Commissioning Group on the 1 July 2022). Safeguarding involves working together across the health economy in partnership with health commissioners, providers and partner agencies such as social care, police, education, the voluntary sector, patients and their families.

Key elements to effective safeguarding are timely, comprehensive and secure information sharing, linking with service users to ensure safeguarding is person centred and working with parents/carers to ensure the voice of the child is heard. Safeguarding is integral to all work streams to ensure a consistent approach and the engagement of all stakeholders.

 

NHS NW London has a responsibility to gain assurance that services they commission have appropriate arrangements in place to safeguard adults and children.  There are a number of mechanisms in place to support this function:

  • Evaluation of safeguarding service provision, in cooperation with partner agencies.
  • Supporting completion of recommendations/actions arising from statutory and mandatory reviews and dissemination of learning across the health economy.
  • Serious Incident reporting and monitoring.
  • Site Visits.
  • Designated Professionals attendance at health provider safeguarding committees/meetings.
  • Safeguarding quarterly and annual reports.
  • CQC and OFSTED inspection reports.
  • Patient feedback.

This is not an exhaustive list.

NHS NW London Safeguarding Team comprises of:

  • Designated Nurses Safeguarding Children
  • Designated Professionals Safeguarding Adults
  • Designated Doctors Safeguarding Children
  • Designated Nurses Looked After Children (LAC)
  • Designated Doctors Looked After Children (LAC)
  • Designated Doctors for Child Death
  • Named GPs for Safeguarding Children
  • Business Support Officers

 

Designated Professionals for Safeguarding Children and Adults role

The statutory posts of Designated Professionals (nurses, doctors, and social workers), provide strategic leadership and expertise to the health community of North West London, other agencies and the statutory safeguarding partnerships for both children and adults on behalf of NHS NW London. They oversee the health element of all safeguarding statutory and non-statutory reviews including Safeguarding Adult Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews, Rapid Reviews, Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews (previously known as Serious Case Reviews) and Case Management Reviews.  The team identify safeguarding risks, challenges and good practice within the health and care system and work with commissioned services and partner agencies to embed learning from reviews to make safeguarding and quality improvements for adults, children and young people.

Designated Professionals for Looked After Children

Designated Nurses/Doctors have specific roles and responsibilities for Looked After Children, including the provision of strategic advice and guidance to service planners and commissioning organisations. Their role is to assist service planning and to advise NHS NW London in fulfilling their responsibilities as commissioner of services to improve the health of Looked After Children.

The term ‘looked after children’ includes unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, children in friends and family placements, and those children where the agency has authority to place the child for adoption. It does not include those children who have been permanently adopted or who are on a special guardianship order.

A child will cease being “Looked After” when they are adopted, return home or reach the age of 18 years.

Care Leavers are those children who have been previously Looked After and are now being supported to live independently, with an age range of 18 to 25 years.

Social care responsibilities for Care Leavers over the age of 21 has now changed under the Children and Social Work Act (2017), which enables care leavers to request support up to the age of 25, regardless of whether or not they are in education.

Named General Practitioner (GP) for Safeguarding Children (Primary Care)

The Named GP Safeguarding Children role is a statutory role and the GP is a member of NHS NW London safeguarding network. Named GPs support all activities necessary to meet safeguarding responsibilities across Primary Care, and champion issues for GPs in the wider health and multiagency economy.

The Named GP works closely with the Designated Professionals as part of a safeguarding children team; linking with the Safeguarding Adult/Looked After Children professionals.

  • Providing expert advice and guidance to clinical colleagues across the Health Economy in relation to the management of individual safeguarding concerns.
  • Providing health expertise on safeguarding issues to multi-agency partners.
  • Ensuring the needs of Looked After Children are met.
  • Involvement in the statutory the Child Death Review Process.
  • Developing and facilitating single agency training for GP’s and relevant practice staff.
  • Ensuring NHS NW London has policies and procedures in line with the multi-agency procedural frameworks.
  • Ensuring NHS NW London and commissioned health care providers discharge their responsibilities in relation to statutory reviews including Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, Safeguarding Adult Reviews and Domestic Homicide Reviews.
  • Share relevant learning from local and national case reviews and seek assurance as to how learning is embedded.
  • Lead and develop multi agency working to ensure robust and effective safeguarding processes are maintained and to ensure an appropriate health contribution to multi-agency working across the Health and Social Care economy.
  • Represent NHS NW London and support the statutory Safeguarding Boards for both Children and Adults to undertake their statutory functions with the support of stakeholders and partners.
  • Support NHS NW London and health care providers during the statutory inspection process.

  • To provide to support, safeguarding supervision and advice to General Practice and other independent contractors in relation to safeguarding children.
  • To work with Designated professionals and Named Professionals in the Borough area and Named GPs in local areas, as part of clinical networks.
  • To contribute to the Local Safeguarding Children’s Partnership and sub groups.
  • To offer support to partner agencies in relation to their processes and quality assurance as relevant to primary care and safeguarding children.
  • To contribute to safeguarding related training to General Practice and other service providers.
  • To support GP practice leads and advise on processes/quality assurance as relevant to primary care and safeguarding children.
  • Participate and contribute to Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews /Case Management Review/ Safeguarding related Audits and individual agency reviews in relation to Primary Care.

  • Physical abuse
  • Sexual abuse
  • Psychological / Emotional abuse
  • Financial abuse
  • Neglect and acts of omission
  • Discriminatory abuse
  • Domestic Abuse
  • Organisational abuse
  • Self-Neglect
  • Modern Day Slavery

Safeguarding children is everybody’s responsibility and all adults have a duty to report concerns. You could be a neighbour, friend, parent, relative, child-minder, teacher, doctor, nurse or work for an organisation which has contact with children and young people. There are many different forms of child abuse and neglect, such as child sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation and child trafficking, and they can all be classified as one or more of the four categories of abuse and neglect set out below:

  1. Emotional
  2. Physical
  3. Sexual
  4. Neglect

Other Types of Abuse

  • Female Genital Mutilation
  • Honour Based Violence
  • Crimes committed in the name of ‘honour’ might include:
  • Domestic abuse
  • Threats of violence
  • Sexual or psychological abuse
  • Forced marriage
  • Being held against your will or taken somewhere you do not want to go
  • Assault

Local authorities have the lead responsibility to coordinate safeguarding concerns for both children and adults but all agencies have a responsibility to protect adults and children at risk under the direction of the Care Act (2014) and Children Act (2004).

If you are concerned about a child, young person or adult you must make a referral to the local authority (for information on referral by borough, see table below).

  • Every local authority will have a specialist Safeguarding Team within social services working with children and families.
  • If immediate action needs to be taken, then the police should be called via 999.
  • If there is knowledge concerning a threat to life, suicide or indications of serious injury, then the emergency services will be immediately contacted.

If you wish to make a referral to borough children and adult safegarding teams, please use the contact details in the table below.

 

Borough

Children

Adult

London Borough of Brent

Children Brent family front door: 020 8987 4300

020 8937 4098/99

safeguardingadults@brent.gov.uk

020 8863 5250 (out-of-office-hours)
London Borough of Ealing

020 8825 8000

ecirs@ealing.gov.uk

020 8825 8000

020 88258000 (out-of-office-hours)
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham

Children (ICAT), the family services front door

020 8753 6600

020 8748 8588 (out-of-hours)

familyservices@lbhf.gov.uk

020 8753 4198 (choose option 3)

020 8748 8588 (out-of-office-hours)

safeguardingadults@lbhf.gov.uk
London Borough of Harrow

020 8901 2690

020 8424 0999 (out-of-office-hours)

020 8420 9453

020 8420 9453 (out-of-office-hours)

safeguardingadults@harrow.gov.uk
London Borough of Hillingdon

01895 556 006

strongerfamilieshub@hillingdon.gov.uk

Click here to make a referral via the web-based portal

01895 556 633

01895 250 111 (out-of-office-hours)

Click here to raise a concern directly with the Safeguarding Adults Team
London Borough of Hounslow

020 8583 6600 (choose option 2)

020 8583 2222 (out-of-office-hours)

childrensocialcare@hounslow.gov.uk

020 8583 3100

020 8583 2222 (out-of-office-hours)

safeguardingadults@hounslow.gov.uk
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Children: 020 7361 3013

socialservices@rbkc.gov.uk

020 7361 3013

020 7373 2227 (out-of-office-hours)

socialservices@rbkc.gov.uk   
Westminster City Council

020 7641 4000

accesstochildrensservices@westminster.gov.uk

020 7641 2176/ 020 7641 2500 / 020 7641 1175/020 7641 6000

020 7641 2388 (out of hours 5pm-8am)

 

Email: nhsnwl.icbsafeguardingadmin@nhs.net 

In England and Wales, the term ‘looked after children’ (children looked after) is defined in law under the Children Act 1989. A child is looked after by a local authority if he or she is in their care or is provided with accommodation for more than 24 hours by the authority. Looked after children fall into four main groups:

  • Children who are accommodated under voluntary agreement with their parents (section 20);
  • Children who are the subject of a care order (section 31) or interim care order (section 38);
  • Children who are the subject of emergency orders for their protection (section 44 and 46);
  • Children who are compulsorily accommodated. This includes children remanded to the local authority or subject to a criminal justice supervision order with a residence requirement (section 21).
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