To consider and agree pre-decision scrutiny questions/comments to be presented to Cabinet.

(Time allocated – 30 minutes).

Item 5.7 Community Safety Partnership Plan Review and Extension.

The following question was raised regarding Prevent and FGM in the context that the Committee was concerned that teachers especially but also other professionals were intervening and referring on when this might not be the most appropriate or necessary course of action:

How does the Council and its partners ensure that not only are the thresholds are in place but all partners agencies at different levels of staff - especially front line - know what these are.

Subsequent to the meeting the following response was received.

Prevent:

The delivery of Prevent is led through Children’s Services and the Community Safety team. There are key posts funded in place to support the delivery of Prevent through training and workshops that are delivered to a host of organisations and individuals. We have an Education Officer who delivers WRAP (Workshop Raising Awareness of Prevent) training and support across the primary and secondary schools in Tower Hamlets to teaching and school staff. There is also training and support in place for parents and families through the parental engagement team.

Further training is delivered by the Prevent Engagement Officer in the Community Safety team. This has included to leads and frontline workers in the CCG, RSLS, Foster Care Team, Voluntary Sector, Youth Services, London Probation, Unite, Pest Control and LBTH Community Language Team. 520 individuals have been trained from 1^st April 2015 to 31^st December 2015.  Further training is being tailored and scheduled for social workers across Learning Disabilities and Older Persons Services. Presentations on Prevent including referral pathways have been delivered including at the Children’s Safeguarding Board. This is a multi-agency board attended by leads across partner agencies including schools, colleges, health, police, voluntary sector representatives and adults and children’s social care. The Prevent Board is the strategic board which meets quarterly to ensure the strategic vision for Prevent and Safeguarding is embedded and understood within each organisation and communicated to teams. Feedback from training sessions are a guide to understanding and also help team to support further training. The Board is a sub group of the Community Safety Partnership and therefore reports back on activity and challenges each quarter.  

Along with the training and support, referrals are managed through the Social Inclusion Panel and Safeguarding Adults Panel. The panels are attended as appropriate across Children’s and Community Safety, Police, Safeguarding leads, Health and as appropriate case workers and intervention providers pertinent to cases. This ensures all cases are discussed in a partnership and holistic way with support plans which safeguard individuals, families and communities.

FGM:

Tower Hamlets has a multi-pronged approach to addressing FGM and supporting professionals to respond appropriately. FGM is one of 10 priority areas within our Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Plan and will continue to be in our new strategy which is currently going through consultation. We have direct action plans for FGM, including working with other North East boroughs for a multi-agency response to FGM. We are working on a 2 year pilot with MOPAC around wider harmful practices (including FGM, forced marriage, so-called ‘honour’ based violence and faith-based abuse) and part of that is a one year element funded by the DfE focussing explicitly on FGM. We have a FGM social worker who is based in the specialist team at the Royal London Hospital. Cases that are referred to MASH/IPST come directly to her for assessment. She works directly with other services, including our peer advocates to support families around FGM and to provide support to other colleagues within children’s social care. We have 2 advocates who provide capacity building support to professionals to deal with all cases of harmful practices by ensuring that they are appropriately supported and skilled up to respond to FGM. We provide training through a number of mechanisms for professionals around FGM: VAWG champions, VAWG multi-agency training and PEHP (Partnership for Ending Harmful Practices) training. Over the last two years, we have trained 150 VAWG champions on how to refer to all forms of violence; 206 other professionals on FGM specifically and 389 school staff (including teachers, child protection leads etc.) on FGM as well as over 200 students.

Teachers have a mandatory duty to report FGM since October 2015 where a young person has disclosed to them. I have included information from the Home Office and DfE which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mandatory-reporting-of-female-genital-mutilation-procedural-information