Towards a Public Service Agreement on Safeguarding

Abstract

The main section of this document has two main components:•part one, an overview of recommendations •part two, detailed process and findings.There is also an executive summary which is a very brief outline of the suggested measures and summarises the key points of part one.Part one gives an account of the model of safeguarding that was developed and why particular measures have been selected. It draws upon and refers to, evidence presented in more detail in various sections of part two.Part two gives an account of how the study progressed and discusses the evidence on which we draw to support the measures proposed. Part two describes in detail the process of developing and testing the safeguarding model and the measures to underpin the proposed PSAs from:

The preoccupation with thresholds in cases of child death or serious injury through abuse and neglect

“…T he debate concerning levels of intervention and thresholds into and between services has been part of a long standing twin pronged drive to encourage prevention and the efficient use of resources within child welfare services (Hardiker et al, 1991;Mesie et al, 2007;Frost, 1997). One of the objectives of the Quality Protects Programme launched in 1998 was 'To ensure that referral and assessment processes discriminate effectively between different types and levels of need and produce a timely service response' (Robbins, 2001).…”