364 - Independent Scrutineer

The Children Act 2004 and as amended by Children and Social Work Act 2017 requires the three safeguarding partners to have a shared and equal duty to make arrangements to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in a local area.

Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 has set out the arrangements for an independent scrutiny function, which should provide the critical challenge and appraisal of the multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

The role of Scrutineer will be independent of the Safeguarding Partnership.

In the Wigan Borough the Safeguarding Children's Partnership will encompass the requirements of the Safeguarding Children Partnership as per the Children and Social Work Act 2017.

The Independent Scrutineer is accountable to the strategic leads appointed by the three safeguarding partners and will work in collaboration with Independent Chair of the Wigan Safeguarding Children's Partnership.

Within Wigan, our Safeguarding Partnership is in a key position to help deliver our collective ambitions for the borough outlined in our Deal for 2030 Strategy, as well as help shape and deliver our joint locality plans.

The scrutineer role is being introduced to help the partnership shape and develop our joint approaches that assist with embedding a whole family, life course approach to safeguarding, and critically to help us draw in the lived experience of young people and their families into planning and delivery of strength-based interventions and practice.

The role of Independent Scrutineer is to: • Provide assurance in judging the effectiveness of multi-agency arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in the Wigan Borough, including arrangements to identify and review serious child safeguarding cases. • Provide independent scrutiny as part of a wider system which includes the independent inspectorates' single assessment of the individual safeguarding partners and the Joint Targeted Area Inspections • Act as a constructive critical friend and promote reflection to drive continuous quality improvement • Consider how effectively the safeguarding arrangements are working for children, young people and their families as well as for practitioners; and how well the safeguarding partners are providing strong and effective leadership • Contribute to an annual report which will be published on the Wigan Safeguarding Children's Partnership website. (DfE, 2018: Paragraphs 31 to 35).

Mandatory statement The Safeguarding Partners are committed to complying with the European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and meeting the requirements of the Information Commissioner's office (regulating data protection compliance in the UK).

It is your responsibility to ensure that the work you undertake is compliant with the General Data Protection Regulations.