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Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership

If you are worried about the welfare or safety of a child or young person

Email: mashagency@lewisham.gov.uk

Tel: 020 8314 6660

Our Organisational Structure

young childWe know that strong leadership and the right structures are critical for the new arrangements to be effective.

Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023) names the local authority chief executive, the accountable officer of a clinical commissioning group and a chief officer of police as the lead representatives with accountability under the legislation.

The lead representatives may delegate the responsibility and authority for ensuring full participation with these arrangements to a senior officer, but remain accountable for any actions or decisions taken on behalf of their agency.

In Lewisham, the lead representatives have named the following senior officers who will have delegated responsibility to work together to promote multi agency safeguarding within the borough of Lewisham:

NHS Lewisham Integrated Care System (ICS)
Ceri Jacob
Place Executive Lead

London Borough of Lewisham
Pinaki Ghoshal
Executive Director for Children and Young People

Metropolitan Police

Simon Dilkes
Detective Superintendent, Public Protection, Southeast BCU

Together with Senior Advisors, they will form the LSCP Executive Partnership which will be responsible for:

  • Setting the vision, strategy and policy direction for Lewisham’s safeguarding arrangements
  • Ensuring wider accountability across services
  • Delivering a fully accountable multi agency system for safeguarding and protecting children in all settings

The Executive Partnership will meet bi-monthly and will be supported by, and work closely with, the Safeguarding Partnership Group.

Members of the Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership Group will be drawn from relevant agencies and provide monitoring and challenge to their own and other agencies. They will be required to speak with authority and take decisions on behalf of their agency, commit them on policy, resourcing and practice matters and hold their own organisation to account on how effectively they participate and implement the local arrangements.

The Partnership group will meet three times a year and be chaired by a member of the Executive in yearly rotation.

Organisation Representative
London Borough of Lewisham - Joint Chair Executive Director for Children and Young People
NHS Lewisham CCG - Joint Chair Managing Director
Metropolitan Police - Joint Chair Detective Superintendent Safeguarding
Children's Social Care Director Children’s Social Care
Youth Offending and Community Safety Director of Public Protection and Safety
Commissioned Children’s Services including Children’s Centres Director of Joint Commissioning and Early Help
Early Years, Primary, Secondary and Post 16 Education, SEND and inclusion Director of Education Services
NHS Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children
NHS Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group Designated Doctor for Safeguarding Children
Schools and Academies Headteacher and Governor Representative
NHS England Director of Nursing for South London
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust Lead Clinician
Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Chief Nurse
Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector, Safeguarding
Probation Area Manager
Community Rehabilitation Company Area Manager
Public Health Director of Public Health
Housing Director of Housing
Community Christ the Rock Ministries
Phoenix Community Housing
Local Authority Cabinet Member for School Performance and Children’s Services

Four subgroups will report to and inform the work of the Executive Partnership and the Safeguarding Partnership.

  • Monitoring, Evaluation and Service Improvement, including Audit
  • Learning from Practice
  • Schools’ Safeguarding Network
  • Multi-Agency Child Exploitation (MACE) 

In order to minimise bureaucracy and learn from practice, time limited Task and Finish Groups will be convened when needed.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Service Improvement including Audit

The purpose of this group is to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of what is being achieved the partners, individually and collectively. Multi agency audits help to measure the quality, effectiveness and outcomes of safeguarding work across the partnership. Members of this group participate in audit activities including case audits, interviews with children, young people and parents, surveys, consultations and discussions with practitioners and triangulate this information to establish the quality of safeguarding delivery, identify areas that require further improvement and influence system change.

Learning from Practice

The Learning from Practice group is part of our commitment to a dynamic and self-improving system where excellent practice is the norm. It has responsibility for identifying and reviewing incidents that raise issues of improvements to practice, conducting rapid reviews and, where appropriate, notifying incidents to the National Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and commissioning and publishing local child safeguarding practice reviews.

The Learning from Practice Group has a key role to play in improving collective knowledge about where there is good practice and also whether there are systemic issues and how policy and practice might change to address them.

Our focus is on evidence and analysis, not who did or didn’t do what and when, but on ensuring that learning is promoted and embedded in a way that local services for children and families can become more reflective and that changes to practice can be implemented.

Schools’ Safeguarding Network

Schools are a vital and central part of the safeguarding partnership as they have a crucial role to play in safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, given the intensity of the contact with children, young people and their families. The Executive Director for Children and Young People represents schools on the Executive of the partnership.

The Schools Safeguarding Network is responsible for communicating the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children to all schools within Lewisham. It will monitor safeguarding activities across all the schools, across the phases to improve outcomes for children, provide a communication channel between all schools and the Lewisham Learning and Development Partnership and act as a source of peer support in meeting safeguarding responsibilities. The chair of the Schools Safeguarding Network will then sit on the Partnership Group.

Multi-Agency Child Exploitation subgroup (MACE) 

In response to London guidance, the Lewisham Safeguarding partnership reviewed our local arrangements (Concern Hub). In January 2022 we started to transition from the Concern Hub model to a MACE structure based on the new London guidance. 

The Lewisham MACE provides a strategic, tactical and operational response to extra familial harm to children and young people across Lewisham. The definition of extra familial for the purpose MACE includes sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation, county lines, serious youth violence and harmful sexual behaviour. The strategic approach to exploitation in Lewisham encompasses 4  key strands:  Pursue , Prevent, Protect and Restore. The strategic MACE subgroup as a partnership seeks to understand and identify themes of exploitation and support the development of strategic responses to child exploitation in Lewisham.

young childSafeguarding Partnership Support Team

The day to day work of the LSCP will be undertaken by Safeguarding Partnership Support Team reporting to the Head of Safeguarding and Quality Assurance in the Council. The unit will provide organisational and administrative support for the Executive and Safeguarding Partnership and well as sub groups and be responsible for the day to day running of the Partnership.

A member of the support team will have responsibility for supporting with data analysis to ensure understanding of need, emerging issues and relevant service performance, in particular answering the questions:

  • How much have we done?
  • How well did we do it?
  • What difference has it made?

Arrangements with Greenwich and Bexley

Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley will have discrete Multi-Agency Safeguarding Partnership Arrangements but the three boroughs will work closely together to share learning and improve innovation, collaboration and efficiency.

At the most senior level, this will work through a Tri-borough Steering Group that will meet twice annually to consider the areas where a Tri-borough focus can most efficiently and effectively improve safeguarding and where possible align priorities.

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