Working with area boards and networks

Each local authority in England must have multi-agency arrangements for keeping children and adults at risk safe. They may have different names but are often called the Safeguarding Children Board or Partnership and the Safeguarding Adults Board.

You should stay connected with your local area safeguarding board for adults and your local area safeguarding board or partnership for children. How much you can do will depend on your capacity. See how many of the items of the list you can achieve.

• Make sure you have current contact details for your local area safeguarding board for adults and your local area safeguarding board or partnership for children including details of their website.
• Make sure all your members have easy access to those details and that you tell them when they change.
• Make sure someone in your organisation knows the procedures for making referrals for children and for adults at risk in your area, and understands additional information such as thresholds for complaint.
• Advocate to the boards or partnerships to make sure they understand the needs of the voluntary sector and that they produce guidance appropriate to them as well as guidance for the education and social care sector.
• Know what training they offer and how local organisations can access it.
• Attend meetings of the boards regularly
• Collect information from your members about how they find contact with the boards or partnerships and present that to the boards
• Set up, manage, join or recruit members to join a local area voluntary sector network for safeguarding that can feed into the board or partnership and do additional work of its own.

Your members will have good insight into the key issues affecting people in your area. Through their activities they may become aware of how any changes made in statutory services are affecting local residents. They’ll be aware of any specific risks of harm to children or adults at risk that are surfacing in the area. They’ll also be able to share information about challenges in recruiting or supporting staff and volunteers.

Infrastructure organisations can play a key role in gathering together all that information and use it to help strengthen and target safeguarding practice. You can use it to make decisions about what training and guidance to provide and you can share this valuable insight with the local safeguarding boards.

A local area safeguarding network focused on voluntary sector organisations can be one of the best ways for an infrastructure organisation to bring the knowledge of their members together. This can help share information and bridge any gaps between service providers.

The amount of attention that a local area safeguarding board or partnership is able to give to voluntary sector organisations who are not delivering regulated activity can vary by area. Hosting an effective network can make sure those boards can still learn from the useful insight of voluntary organisations.

There are several key benefits:

• Networks can equip people with shared knowledge, skills and contacts to recognise and even prevent abuse happening. It can highlight if there are specific trends or issues or patterns emerging in your area.
• Networks can reduce barriers and isolation for safeguarding leads and trustees and can improve the appropriateness of safeguarding referrals. This can reduce the number of inappropriate referrals.
• Networks can share experiences of local safeguarding thresholds and highlight concerns of their level, understanding or how they are being applied in practice.
• Networks provide an opportunity to share good practice already happening in the voluntary sector, which is useful for developing future partnerships.
• Networks can help to create a good safeguarding culture within the local voluntary sector. This can be particularly strong if it is backed up by support from the infrastructure organisation, coordinating the network or sharing information and resources.

Some tips for making network meetings successful:

• You need to convince your colleagues in the public sector to attend and show that they value the contribution of the network and its members
• Meetings should be short and full of relevant, applicable content. The more useful the meeting, the more people you are likely to attract (and keep them coming back).
• The more resources you can put into the meetings the more successful they will be. Consider paying for meeting space, time for a worker to coordinate, refreshments, childcare.