The Brent Safeguarding Children Partnership (BSCP) is prioritising online safety for young people in the coming year, recognising the rapidly evolving digital landscape and its impact on children's wellbeing. The BSCP's focus on online safety comes as the Safe Highly Forum reviewed the online bill and recognised the speed at which the online landscape is changing.
The decision was announced at the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee meeting on Wednesday, 2 July 2025, where the BSCP presented its annual report covering April 2024 to March 2025. The report highlighted the partnership's commitment to safeguarding children through multi-agency collaboration and continuous learning.
Keith Makin, Independent Scrutineer for the BSCP, explained that the partnership's role is to seek assurance on safeguarding, not to run the system operationally. He noted the development of a new data dashboard and plans to work more closely with children and young people.
Priorities for the next 12 months include online safety, data collection and analysis, hearing the voice of young people, neurodiversity among children, and transitional safeguarding. Councillor Charlie Clinton asked what the trigger was for focusing on online safety now and whether there would be an ongoing review. Mr Makin responded that the Safe Highly Forum had looked at the online bill and realised how quickly things were moving.
The partnership is taking a proactive approach to address online safety concerns. This includes:
- Surveying schools: To assess mobile phone usage and policies in all primary and secondary schools across the borough. The survey aims to understand the current landscape of mobile phone use and existing policies within schools.
- Task and Finish Group: Establishing a group to examine the current situation and develop recommendations. The Task and Finish Group will focus on establishing the current situation, gathering data, and reviewing experiences and evidence. It is expected that the group will recommend the creation of a continuing group to address online safety concerns.
- Youth Strategy: Embedding online safety as a key focus in the youth strategy refresh.
Palbinder, explained that without multi-agency arrangements, it would be almost impossible to respond to issues like county lines, grooming gangs, and knife crime.
The committee made recommendations to ensure that online safety was an ongoing thing, create a report on how services were supporting young people, and improve support for youth organisations.
For more information, you can read the Brent Safeguarding Children Partnership Annual Report Apr 24 - Mar 25 and the Appendix A - Brent Safeguarding Children Partnership Yearly Report Apr24-Mar25.
