Duty to Establish a Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP)

Section 13 of the Children Act 2004 requires each local authority to establish a Local Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) for their area and specifies the organisations and individuals (other than the local authority) that should be represented on LSCPs.

The LSCP has a range of roles and statutory functions including developing local safeguarding policy and procedures and scrutinising local arrangements.

Section 14 of the Children Act 2004 sets out the objectives of LSCPs, which are:

• To coordinate what is done by each person or body represented on the Partnership for the purposes of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the area; and
• To ensure the effectiveness of what is done by each such person or body for those purposes.

In order to fulfil its statutory function under regulation 5 an LSCP should use data and, as a minimum, should:

• Assess the effectiveness of the help being provided to children and families, including early help;
• Assess whether LSCP partners are fulfilling their statutory obligations set out in chapter 2 of this guidance;
• Quality assure practice, including through joint audits of case files involving practitioners and identifying lessons to be learned; and
• Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of training, including multi-agency training, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

LSCPs do not commission or deliver direct frontline services though they may provide training. While LSCPs do not have the power to direct other organisations they do have a role in making clear where improvement is needed. Each Partnership partner retains their own existing line of accountability for safeguarding.

LSCP Members should include:

• District councils in local government areas which have them;
• The chief officer of Police;
• The Local Probation Trust;
• The Youth Offending Team;
• The NHS Commissioning Board and clinical commissioning groups;
• NHS Trusts and NHS Foundation Trusts all or most of whose hospitals, establishments and facilities are situated in the local authority area;
• Cafcass;
• The governor or director of any secure training centre in the area of the authority; and
• The governor or director of any prison in the area of the authority which ordinarily detains children;
• The local authority must take reasonable steps to ensure that the LSCP includes two lay members representing the local community;
• The Lead Member for Children should be a participating observer of the LSCP;
• The local authority must take reasonable steps to ensure the LSCP includes representatives of relevant persons and bodies of such as:
  • The governing body of a maintained school;
  • The proprietor of a non-maintained special school;
  • The proprietor of a city technology college, a city college for the technology of the arts or an Academy; and
  • The governing body of a further education institution the main site of which is situated in the authority’s area.