One Minute Guide – NSCP Update November 2025
Newcastle Safeguarding Children Partnership (NSCP)
One Minute Guide – Partnership Executive Group
11 November 2025
Overview
The Partnership Executive Group met to reflect on safeguarding performance, progress against priority areas, and learning emerging from audits, reviews, and national developments. The discussion highlighted a partnership demonstrating strong multi-agency commitment and improving practice—particularly in trauma-informed approaches and governance—while also recognising increasing demand, variability in practice, and the need for stronger system-wide consistency. A clear priority is to understand how learning translates into measurable improvements in outcomes for children and families across the partnership.
1. Responding to Rising Demand and Complexity in Safeguarding
The partnership reviewed data indicating sustained and increasing demand, including rising numbers of children on Child Protection plans and consistently high referral and re-referral rates. This reflects a system managing significant complexity, with more families presenting at crisis point, potentially bypassing early intervention pathways.
In particular, the growing cohort of vulnerable babies and large sibling groups reinforces the importance of early identification and coordinated multi-agency responses.
Implications for partners:
- Strengthen early help responses to prevent escalation
- Ensure services are equipped to respond to increasingly complex family needs
- Align practice to support families earlier and reduce crisis-driven demand
2. Strengthening Multi-Agency Practice and Learning from Case Reviews
Learning from the local and regional sections of the Casey Audit and other review activity highlighted both strong practice and areas for development across the system. Positive findings included effective multi-agency working, trauma-informed approaches, and strong governance and oversight across agencies.
However, areas requiring improvement included inconsistent language in relation to victims, gaps in information sharing (particularly across health and education boundaries), and variation in understanding thresholds for harm. The need to consistently apply a trauma-informed, child-centred approach across all agencies was emphasised.
Implications for partners:
- Embed consistent trauma-informed practice across all services
- Improve information sharing across organisational and geographical boundaries
- Ensure language and practice remain consistently victim-centred
3. Developing a Coherent System Response to Child Sexual Abuse
All partners expressed a strong commitment to strengthening the response to child sexual abuse (CSA), supported by audit work, engagement with national frameworks, and development of a local strategy.
A NSPCC report commissioned by the Partnership highlighted a solid foundation in Newcastle, including effective multi-agency arrangements and innovative practice such as trauma-informed support models. However, it also identified gaps in training, public awareness, data collection, and system coherence.
There is a clear direction towards creating a more coordinated, system-wide CSA response, underpinned by shared learning and strengthened prevention.
Implications for partners:
- Contribute to the development and implementation of a local CSA strategy
- Strengthen workforce confidence and capability through targeted training
- Improve data sharing to support a more integrated understanding of CSA
4. Driving Consistent Safeguarding Practice in Education and Communities
Discussions on knife crime and safeguarding in education highlighted ongoing challenges in achieving consistent, trauma-informed responses across schools. While tools and protocols are in place, their application remains variable, Partners examined data that indicates some settings may be utilising exclusions rather than holistic safeguarding approaches in their responses to related incidents.
From 2025–26, following the introduction of a new Education Engagement Group and the extension of Executive membership, there has been broader representation from the education sector. This has strengthened the Partnership’s ability to extend reach, support consistent multi‑agency responses for vulnerable children, and improve how the Executive captures and responds to messages from schools and other education settings. However, Partners recognised that education settings operate with a degree of independence, requiring influence and engagement rather than direct control. Strengthening collaboration and demonstrating the value of alternative approaches will be key to improving consistency.
Implications for partners:
- Work collaboratively with schools to embed safeguarding-led responses
- Promote understanding that behaviours such as weapon carrying are safeguarding issues
- Support consistent multi-agency responses around vulnerable children
5. Embedding Strategic Priorities: Neglect and Early Intervention
Reported progress on the neglect priority reflects a structured approach, with a clear focus on utilising the Social Care Practice Week to reflect on prevention, early identification, and improving practice through shared tools and training.
There is a strong emphasis on aligning neglect work with wider system reform, including Families First, and strengthening practitioner confidence in recognising and responding to neglect. The integration of learning from practice reviews and feedback from families supports a more responsive and informed approach.
Implications for partners:
- Embed neglect tools and approaches consistently within practice
- Strengthen links between poverty, attendance, and safeguarding
- Ensure learning from families informs service design and delivery
6. Strengthening Scrutiny, Assurance, and System Transparency
Partners acknowledged to planned departure of the independent scrutineer and plans for recruitment to have a new scrutineer in place in the New Year were discussed, including the ongoing shared scrutiny relationship with Gateshead’s Safeguarding Children Partnership. The meeting reinforced the importance of robust scrutiny and assurance arrangements to test whether safeguarding practice is effective across the system. Work relating to MAPPA, LADO, and audit activity demonstrated an increasing focus on understanding performance, improving transparency, and identifying system gaps.
Challenges remain, particularly in accessing consistent data, ensuring partner engagement in assurance activity, and developing comparative insight across agencies and regions.
Implications for partners:
- Engage fully in audit and assurance processes
- Contribute high-quality, comparable data
- Support a culture of transparency and continuous improvement
Summary
The Partnership Executive Group highlighted a system that is committed, reflective, and increasingly aligned around shared safeguarding priorities. Strong foundations are evident in the new structures and process for multi-agency collaboration and learning culture; however, the focus continues to be on achieving greater consistency, strengthening early intervention, and ensuring that learning and strategy translate into improved outcomes for children and families across Newcastle.
