Plymouth Safeguarding Children Board
Plymouth Safeguarding Children Board (PSCB) is an inter-agency forum for:
- Coordinating the work done by the various agencies to safeguard children and promote their welfare
- Ensuring that this work is carried out effectively
Objectives and purpose
The Children Act 2004 places a duty on children's services to establish local boards and sets out the agencies that will be 'board partners' on the PSCB. The Act also places a duty for the authority and board partners to cooperate with each other.
Further guidance for the PSCB is set out in 'Working Together to Safeguard Children: A guide to inter-agency working'. This defines the PSCB as, 'the key statutory mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations will cooperate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and ensuring the effectiveness of what they do'.
The PSCB also has a role to contribute to the planning and delivery of children's services through the Children and Young People's Strategic Plan (CYPSP).
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children means:
- Protecting children from maltreatment
- Preventing the impairment of children's health or development
- Ensuring that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
- Undertaking the role to enable those children to have optimum life chances and enter adulthood successfully
Updated 22 May 2012