Issue - meetings
Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register
Meeting: 29/07/2021 - Audit Committee (Item 5)
5 Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register PDF 236 KB
Additional documents:
- Appendix. 1 for Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register, item 5 PDF 102 KB
- Appendix. 2 for Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register, item 5 PDF 86 KB
- Webcast for Corporate Risk Register and Children's Directorate Risk Register
Minutes:
Mr Paul Rock, Head of Internal Audit, Anti-Fraud and Risk said the report presented was the regular quarterly report to the Committee, which provided an update on the Corporate Risk Register. Mr Rock said Mr James Thomas, the Corporate Director for Children and Culture was also present for any questions in relation to the Directorate’s risk register.
Mr James Thomas then addressed the Committee and said that the Corporate Risk Register set out the strategic risks for his Directorate. He said the Directorate had key responsibilities which are all about managing risks, most obviously in relation to protecting children from abuse and neglect and seeking to ensure that children and young people were not victims of serious violence or crime.
The Chair, Councillor Whitehead said the Committee had previously discussed the corporate risk CSD0016 “Death or Serious Harm to a child” and asked Mr Thomas to provide some background to this.
Mr Thomas said it was important to recognise that the risk of child death is not possible to eliminate. He said this was his sixth local authority as a Corporate Director and this risk was reflected in the same way as other local authorities. He said one of the most significant reviews into Child Protection was carried out by Professor Eileen Munro, published in 2011. Mr Thomas quoted from the report and said, “uncertainty pervades the work of child protection, risk management cannot eradicate risk, it can only try to reduce the probability of harm, the big problem for society and consequently for professionals is working at a realistic expectation of a professional’s ability to predict the future and manage risk harm to children and young people.”
Mr Thomas continued saying sadly child death does occur and occurs in every local authority area. He said Westminster Council had been rated outstanding by Ofsted for several years but have a case of child death. He said sadly in Tower Hamlets there was also a case being investigated. Mr Thomas said the job of Children Services was to take every possible mitigation against these tragic outcomes.
Mr Thomas said following the Ofsted inspections of 2017 and 2019, they had well-established core mitigations, which were rooted in systems. He said the strength and rigour of the systems as well as the people, in terms of strength and quality of staff, helped to ensure this risk was mitigated as best as possible. He said the Children and Social Care Improvement Board continued to meet monthly since the inspection of 2019. He said the use of the use of management information and data, systematic quality assurance, and the multi-agency dimension of the partnership have helped to strengthen the way in which child safeguarding practises are undertaken. Mr Thomas said there were external peers on the Improvement Board, and he was satisfied they had a robust system in place.
In response to questions and comments from the members the following was noted:
- Ms Charlotte Webster, Independent Adviser to the Committee, thanked Mr Thomas for his ... view the full minutes text for item 5