Local Safeguarding Children Boards

(asked on 10th September 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, who is responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of local safeguarding children boards' child sexual exploitation action plans.


Answered by
Edward Timpson Portrait
Edward Timpson
This question was answered on 13th October 2014

Ofsted undertakes a review of each local safeguarding children’s board (LSCB) at the same time as they undertake their inspection of local authorities’ services for children in need of help and protection and looked after children. Neither the review nor the inspection makes specific judgements about the sexual exploitation of children or the effectiveness of the local child sexual exploitation action plans. However, inspectors are required to include in the cases they evaluate “children at risk of harm from physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect; inspectors will also want to identify those children and young people where the local authority have concerns that they may be vulnerable to child sexual exploitation and those children and young people who have been missing from care, home and education”. In undertaking the LSCB review inspectors are required to “evaluate the quality and impact of the policies and procedures produced by the LSCB, such as the local thresholds document and the child sexual exploitation action plan.” An LSCB’s response to child sexual exploitation is considered as part of the overall judgement on the performance of the LSCB. Seven LSCBs of the 33 inspected since the new framework came into being in November 2013 have been found to be inadequate.

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