Safeguarding of children
Currently, joint working at the local level to protect children is coordinated through Local Safeguarding Children Boards in each local authority, and where serious incidents of child harm occur, reviews are conducted at a local level. The Act reframes the approach to local safeguarding by giving the three key safeguarding partners – the local authority, health services, and the police – greater autonomy to define the approach to be taken locally and the appropriate geographical reach of that approach. It also makes provision for the establishment of a national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Where cases raise issues of national importance the Panel will, where they consider it appropriate, arrange for these to be reviewed under their supervision and must publish either the report, or if they consider it inappropriate to do so, any information relating to improvements that should be made following the review that they consider it appropriate to publish.