Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications of the provisions in clause 15 of the Children and Social Work Bill for strengthening safeguarding responsibilities.

Clause 15 of the Children and Social Work Bill is key to bringing about the changes proposed by Alan Wood in his review of the role and function of Local Safeguarding Children Boards. The review’s recommendations, which we accepted, were to replace the existing Local Safeguarding Children Board structure with a stronger but more flexible framework for multi-agency working in local areas. We believe that this stronger framework and flexibility, as set out in clause 15, will improve outcomes for children and their families and enable the effective sharing of information which is so fundamental to safeguarding children.