Introduction

This is the first Three Year Strategic Plan by Bath and North East Somerset Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) and follows on from the LSCB’s Annual Reports and Business Plans 2006/07 and 2007/08.

It is an attempt to realistically anticipate the position of the safeguarding dimensions of children’s services in Bath and North East Somerset in three years time, and to make plans to achieve it.  The Plan must be developed in conjunction with the Children and Young People’s Plan 2006-09 which has the responsibility for delivering safeguarding within the Children’s Trust arrangements.  This Three Year Strategic Plan must also take account of the statutory duties laid down in the Every Child Matters programme of the Children Act 2004.  Most importantly it must take full account of the duties given to Local Safeguarding Children Boards under the Government agenda for making “safeguarding everybody’s business”, and comply with the guidance contained in Working Together to Safeguard Children (2006).

This Three Year Strategic Plan contains the LSCB vision for the Board’s purposes on behalf of Bath and North East Somerset’s children and young people.  It also sets down the values and principles, which guide its actions, as well as the key objectives leading to the outcomes it intends to deliver.  It sets interim goals over the three year period, so that progress is phased, recognising that each phase will be implemented each year in the annual Business Plan of the LSCB.  It identifies the extensive programme of work to be undertaken.  Inevitably new tasks will be added from new responsibilities set down by Government, and from new needs and challenges which will emerge.

Alongside this Three Year Strategic Plan, we are publishing the LSCB’s Business Plan for 2008/2009 which sets out the Strategic Plans first year’s programme in more detail, and will set out the staffing and financial resources that will support it.  It will also set out the timescales for completing the various tasks, and the results they are intended to achieve.

An important part of the energies of the LSCB will go into maintaining the structure, resources and working processes of the Board as an organisation.  We are not apologetic about this.  While it must not be too inward looking or self absorbed, without maintenance there is no organisation to impact on our goals or to break new ground.  Some important responsibilities involve renewing and updating existing arrangements, e.g. training, and undertaking new responsibilities (e.g. Child Death Review Panels) which will require new methods of work.

 The LSCB will continue to be the key mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations in the Local Authority area will co-operate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in Bath and North East Somerset, and for ensuring the effectiveness of what they do.  The work of the LSCB contributes to the wider goals of improving the well-being of all children, with a particular focus on the aspects of the Staying Safe outcome.  Within the wider Children’s Trust governance arrangements its role is to ensure the effectiveness of the arrangements made by individual agencies and the wider partnership to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

The purpose of the Strategic Plan is to develop a road map, one that is transparent and publicly accountable.  It is not a blueprint but innovative and experimental in parts, and capable of adjustment as we learn from experience in the process of implementation.