How we protect children: Significant progress made and our plan to improve further

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) has published its latest inspection on how we protect children today (4 August). The re-inspection was carried out in March, after an initial inspection in 2021 found systemic failings and made 15 recommendations for improvement. We have been working diligently through these recommendations, and following their latest visit, inspectors found that in some areas we have significantly improved the way we protect children. Following the initial inspection, we developed a comprehensive action plan to improve our services to children which means the following are now more effective:

• structure and leadership of child protection, with officers who have significant experience and expertise overseeing all aspects of child protection

• development of a detailed performance framework that shows how well our approach to child protection is being delivered

• training focused on spotting signs of neglect, hearing and recording the voice of a child, and how to gather evidence from children using a trauma-informed approach

• use of IT systems, so that our staff have access to the information and resources they need to complete their duties

• contribution to multi-agency child protection arrangements

• responses to online child sexual abuse by investing in more staff, and reviewing and developing our processes

• management of registered sex offenders, and this team received direct praise from the inspection team.

However, there were a number of areas identified in the initial inspection that we were still working on at the time of the re-inspection. Consequently issues were still present, which we fully accept and recognise there is still more to be done on the following:

• the quality of our child protection investigations

• risk assessment and allocation of responses by our contact centre

• responses to children reported missing from home

• the accuracy of recording details of children’s ethnicity and cultural heritage

• our processes to assess and share information with other organisations to help protect children.

Assistant Chief Constable, Becky Riggs said: “We are committed to improving our child protection services, and addressing the issues raised in our previous inspection which was noted by HMICFRS who saw our detailed action plan.

“We have made a number of positive changes to improve how we protect vulnerable children and have restructured our public protection unit, leadership and governance. Six of the 15 recommendations have been achieved including improving IT, training, our structure, attendance at multi-agency case conferences, our approach to those who pose a risk to children online and our sex offender management unit.

“We worked with specialists to review the capabilities of our public protection unit which has resulted in an investment in staffing, as we recognise there is more work to do. HMICFRS have asked for a detailed action plan within the next six weeks which sets out how we will make further progress around the outstanding recommendations.

“As part of this, we will continue to improve the quality of our investigations, to better safeguard children and bring those responsible for harming them to justice. We’re focused on a number of areas including our quality of investigations involving missing children, the identification of vulnerable children, using evidence from audits, our information sharing with partners and our child exploitation and online crime investigation teams. We are working with our partners to redesign the system for information sharing to ensure we have clear pathways to enable frontline officers and staff to be able to access the right help and support from the appropriate agency at the earliest opportunity when we identify any concerns for the welfare of a child.

“We’re also working with our contact centre colleagues to ensure our risk assessment process is robust and resources are sent appropriately to incidents involving children, recognising that their vulnerability is vitally important and that we need to understand and think about the voice of a child.

“We continue to work closely with HMICFRS who are monitoring our progress, and remain committed to making sure we protect our children and young people. We will keep you updated with our progress."