Waltham Forest Council is set to review its safeguarding partnerships for adults and children, aiming to strengthen partner accountability, enhance quality assurance processes, and embed the voices of residents in the process.

The Scrutiny Coordinating Committee met on Wednesday 24 September 2025, to discuss improvements within the council's safeguarding partnerships, as detailed in the Safeguarding Partnerships document. The review comes after external evaluations, including the Local Government Association's Test of Assurance Review, Corporate Peer Challenge, and Adults Social Care Peer Challenge, identified key areas for improvement.

These areas include:

  • Strengthening partners' line of sight and accountability within the Boards
  • Broadening engagement with education partners and redefining those relationships
  • Addressing limitations in resourcing within the Strategic Partnerships Unit (SPU)
  • Enhancing quality assurance processes, particularly through multi-agency audits
  • Clarifying relationships with national bodies, including the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel
  • Ensuring the Safeguarding Partnership leads on key areas of practice like child neglect
  • Balancing in-person and remote meetings to optimise participation and effectiveness
  • Disaggregating annual reports to enhance relevance and clarity

The report presented to the committee outlined the strategic plans for both the Safeguarding Adults Board and the Safeguarding Children Partnership for 2025-28. Key priorities for the Safeguarding Adults Board include homelessness and safeguarding, safer providers, executive functioning and mental capacity, safer discharge from hospital, safeguarding informal carers, and transitional safeguarding. The Safeguarding Children Partnership will focus on neglect, harms outside the home, children missing education, children's mental health, child sexual abuse, and appropriate use of restrictive practices.

The council aims to strengthen several areas to enable data-informed safeguarding. Initially, the council will use local authority data to develop data dashboards, and over time, intends to incorporate information from other partners as appropriate data sources are identified. These dashboards will provide an overview of safeguarding as a system and help monitor ongoing work.

The council is also committed to making safeguarding more person-centred by systematically embedding the voices of people with lived experience, i.e. adults, children and families into our feedback and assurance frameworks. The integration of resident perspectives within the Strategic Partnership Boards will be embedded throughout activities and delivery plans, facilitated through:

  • Ongoing engagement initiatives, such as resident insight surveys
  • Targeted consultations with relevant resident groups and individuals
  • Analysis of themes arising from professionals, service providers, or quality assurance processes
  • Feedback from various resident networks and insight groups, including the Youth Independent Advisory Group (YIAG), Citizen's Panel, and Place Based Partnership Health Network

The council plans to use key metrics to provide an evidence base for evaluating the effectiveness of partnership interventions and support continuous improvement across all safeguarding domains.

The report mentions that the children's social care reforms emphasise the importance of robust multi-agency collaboration, clear roles, and effective information-sharing to strengthen local safeguarding arrangements. Key priorities for the Partnership include updating guidance on thresholds and practices, engaging education providers at all levels, and ensuring coordinated delivery of reforms. These actions will enhance partnership working and improve identification and responses to harm.

The annual reports of the Safeguarding Partnerships for 2024/25 will be formally presented to the Adults' and Children's Scrutiny Committees in November 2025, along with the corresponding strategic plans. The agenda for the meeting is available online.