Partnership Aims

The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead All-age Safeguarding Partnership (RBWM AASP) works together for the following purposes:

The safeguarding partners along with other relevant agencies are committed to:

co-ordinating their safeguarding services for maximum impact
acting as a strategic leadership group in supporting and engaging others
implementing local and national learning including from serious child and adult safeguarding incidents
learning from independent scrutiny which judges the effectiveness of multi-agency arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children and adults in Windsor & Maidenhead
developing processes that facilitate and drive action beyond usual institutional and agency constraints and boundaries
ensure the effective protection of children and adults is founded on practitioners developing lasting and trusting relationships with them and their families
ensuring that relevant agencies have appropriate, robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place
publishing a report at least once in every 12-month period, which sets out what they have done as a result of these arrangements, including on child and adult safeguarding practice reviews, and how effective these arrangements have been in practice.

The three Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSPs) have equal and joint responsibility for local safeguarding arrangements.

Role of the lead safeguarding partners

Lead Safeguarding Partners (LSPs) set the strategic plan and priorities for the multi-agency arrangements. They focus on the key issues which promote multi-agency practice, this allows them a direct view to its effectiveness.

Key areas for LSPs to determine include:

priorities for the multi-agency partnership
establishing local learning reviews and the learning framework
assessment of the performance and effectiveness of multi-agency practice
model of independent scrutiny
resourcing and funding of the arrangements
structure of the RBWM AASP
data and information sharing policies
communication and engagement strategy with relevant partners, children and adults

These issues will be agreed on a three-year timescale with a triennial review.

Role of the executive steering group / delegated safeguarding partners

The delegated safeguarding partners (DSPs) for the three lead partners meet regularly as an Executive Steering group and invite representation from Education and Probation in recognition of the important roles they have in ensuring effective multi-agency safeguarding arrangements in Windsor & Maidenhead.

The DSPs focus on driving improvement in practice and delivering the agreed priorities and ensuring practices of police, health, education and local government children’s services professionals are as effective as they can be to help protect children. Like the LSPs, DSPs must act as a team and not be a spokesperson for their agency alone.

The decisions made by DSPs should be reported back to the LSPs by the Executive Steering group. The executive group members should not need to refer upwards to LSPs to seek approval for operational decisions or changes in the arrangements of multi-agency services, including the sub-structure of the RBMW AASP.

The Executive Steering group will be held to account through the scheme of delegation to:

provide evidence about the quality/performance of multi-agency practice
update on the progress of meeting the RBMW AASP priorities
identify and anticipate new challenges to the work of multi-agency teams
direct the RBMW AASP support team to minimise bureaucracy and duplication
provide analyses of trends in practice from intelligent interpretation of data
report on the engagement of schools and other relevant partners
respond to messages from learning reviews
report on the performance of the support team and use of allocated budgets
advise on any issues DSPs cannot agree on

In Windsor & Maidenhead the 3 statutory organisations that provide the above functions are:

Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead
Frimley Integrated Care Board
Thames Valley Police