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This article uses a model describing different levels of collaboration to chart the development of area child protection committees (ACPCs) and their successors, local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs). It argues that concerns about these partnerships lacking ‘teeth’ have resulted in a broadening of remit and increased regulation and statutory guidance. Using criteria from the literature for effective multidisciplinary strategic partnerships, consideration is given to specific issues that members of LSCBs encounter that limit their powers and influence. The final section of the article questions whether national regulation and guidance is sufficient to give LSCBs ‘teeth’ and ensure effective local collaborative activity. The author concludes that the strength and influence of the LSCB is as dependent on the quality of leadership provided by the members of the LSCB as it is on regulation and guidance.

Adult Safeguarding Boards are the means by which local authorities in England and Wales seek to work collaboratively to protect adults at risk of abuse. The last two years have heralded the emergence of the role of Independent Chairs. This paper seeks to outline the experience of Adult Safeguarding Boards from around North West England.

A general review of the seven Independent Chairs and 15 employed chairs (typically Directors of Adult Social Services) in North West England endorsed the importance of having a virtual network to work on a shared portfolio of interests.

The review highlighted concerns regarding the independence of Independent Chairs, the challenges to partnership working created by the turnover of managers, the governance of Adult safeguarding Boards, and their performance and practice.

The paper confirms that diversity is the dominant characteristic of Adult Safeguarding Boards in North West England.

Criticisms of the effectiveness of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) led to legislative reform in the shape of the Children and Social Work Act 2017. Given parallels between the mandates for LSCBs and Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs), the onus is on SABs to demonstrate their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to explore how SABs might more effectively demonstrate their impact across the range of their mandated responsibilities.

The paper draws on definitions of impact from social work education, healthcare and from university research, exploring their relevance for capturing different types of data regarding the outcomes and impact of SAB activity. The paper also draws on frameworks for the process of capturing data and for implementing strategies designed to change practice and develop adult safeguarding services.

The paper argues that SABs have struggled to identify their impact and need to consider what types of impact they are seeking to demonstrate before choosing methods of seeking to capture that information. The paper also argues that SABs may have given insufficient thought to the process of change management, to the components needed to ensure that desired outcomes are embedded in procedural and practice change.

This paper explores the challenges for SABs of identifying their impact and offers some theoretical frameworks that have defined different types of impact. The paper also draws on frameworks that identify the different components that are necessary for achieving change. This paper offers a contribution to theory building and is a response to the challenge of demonstrating the value that SABs add to adult safeguarding policy and practice.

A case study reviews the findings of the longitudinal service development and practice change initiative to embed making safeguarding personal in adult safeguarding. The findings of that initiative are mapped against the frameworks for identifying impact. Experience of implementing the initiative is mapped against the frameworks for effective implementation of change.

The paper presents frameworks for identifying the different types of outcomes and impact that SABs may achieve through their strategic business plans and for ensuring that the different components are present for the successful implementation and maintenance of change. The paper argues that the legal, policy and financial context within which SABs are located presents challenges as well as opportunities with respect to achieving and demonstrating impactful change. However, it also suggests that a more informed understanding of different types of impact may generate different approaches to data collection in order to capture what has been achieved.

The purpose of this article is to report the findings from research into the governance of adult safeguarding policy and practice in England, with particular focus on interagency partnership arrangements expressed through Safeguarding Adults Boards.

The study comprised a systematic search and thematic analysis of English‐language literature on adult safeguarding governance, a survey of Safeguarding Adults Board documentation, and key informant interviews and workshops with professionals involved in adult protection.

The effectiveness of adult safeguarding governance arrangements has not been subject to prior formal evaluation and thus the literature provided little research‐led evidence of good practice. The survey and workshops, however, revealed a rich and complex pattern of arrangements spanning a number of dimensions – the goals and purpose of interagency working, the structures of boards, their membership, chairing and rules of engagement, their functions, and their accountabilities.

The research focus here is England, and thus does not incorporate learning from other jurisdictions. Whilst the research scrutinises the extent to which Boards practise empowerment, service users and carers are not directly involved in the fieldwork aspects of this study. In view of the absence of outcomes evidence identified, there remains a need to investigate the impacts of different forms of governance.

Drawing on this research and on governance frameworks in the context of related interagency fields, the article identifies standards to benchmark the approach to governance taken by Safeguarding Adult Boards.

The benchmarking framework will enable Safeguarding Adults Boards to audit, evaluate, and further develop a range of robust governance arrangements.

Race, religion and culture have been issues in a number of high profile public enquires, but there is little advice to black and minority ethnic (BME) communities about ways to help safeguard children. In Walsall, the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) worked with Muslim organisations to raise awareness on safeguarding local children. The Madressah Project focused on places where large numbers of Muslim children went each day for religious education.The aims of the Madressah project were:• to provide information and guidance to parents, carers and Mosques/Madressahs on ensuring the safety of their children• to advise Madressahs on their legal obligations• to provide advice on safe recruitment• to provide child protection training to the Mosques/Madressahs.The project resulted in an action plan and Good Practice Guide. The Guide attracted wide interest from inspectorates and other local authorities resulting in Walsall providing advice and guidance to others looking to improve practice and provide safe environments for children irrespective of race, ethnicity or culture.

The purpose of this paper is to consider possible implications of recent policy initiatives in schools and local government for child safeguarding practice in education settings in the state sector in England.

Recent policy changes to promote devolution of decision-making to school and local government level are analysed in the light of the literature on multi-agency working for the protection of children.

The paper highlights the complexity of the current context in which local arrangements for the safeguarding of children are operating. This includes efforts at integration of funding and structures, coupled with rapid changes in policy in both education and children’s social care and greater decision-making powers at local level. Together this makes it difficult to evaluate the current strengths of safeguarding arrangements between schools and other local agencies to help ensure that arrangements for the safeguarding of children in “independent” state schools are robust and effective.

Researchers and policy-makers need to consider the efficacy of safeguarding arrangements under new local government and integrated structures in England.

There is relatively little research addressing inter-organisational information exchange in relation to education professionals involved in safeguarding. This paper sets out some directions for inquiry, including specific priorities that may be useful to the research and practice communities in the context of integration.

The paper provides a summary of key policies and strategies that inform child protection in state school settings in England.

This chapter reviews the conditions leading to the emergence of hybrid network structures involved in public service delivery, analyses opportunities for boundary-spanning by network members and frames these against different manifestations of leadership in such collaborative contexts. It addresses a gap in knowledge around leadership in hybrid networks, on the one hand, and around effectiveness of hybrid networks, on the other hand. Following an in-depth case-study of a hybrid network (local safeguarding children boards, LSCB) in England, UK, we advance a researchable proposition according to which, in turbulent times, the effectiveness of such networks is enhanced through one particular leadership type rather than others.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to update the core data set of self-neglect serious case reviews (SCRs) and safeguarding adult reviews (SARs), and accompanying thematic analysis; second, to respond to the critique in the Wood Report of SCRs commissioned by Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) by exploring the degree to which the reviews scrutinised here can transform and improve the quality of adult safeguarding practice.

Further published reviews are added to the core data set from the websites of Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs) and from contacts with SAB independent chairs and business managers. Thematic analysis is updated using the four domains employed previously. The findings are then further used to respond to the critique in the Wood Report of SCRs commissioned by LSCBs, with implications discussed for Safeguarding Adult Boards.

Thematic analysis within and recommendations from reviews have tended to focus on the micro context, namely, what takes place between individual practitioners, their teams and adults who self-neglect. This level of analysis enables an understanding of local geography. However, there are other wider systems that impact on and influence this work. If review findings and recommendations are to fully answer the question “why”, systemic analysis should appreciate the influence of national geography. Review findings and recommendations may also be used to contest the critique of reviews, namely, that they fail to engage practitioners, are insufficiently systemic and of variable quality, and generate repetitive findings from which lessons are not learned.

There is still no national database of reviews commissioned by SABs so the data set reported here might be incomplete. The Care Act 2014 does not require publication of reports but only a summary of findings and recommendations in SAB annual reports. This makes learning for service improvement challenging. Reading the reviews reported here against the strands in the critique of SCRs enables conclusions to be reached about their potential to transform adult safeguarding policy and practice.

Answering the question “why” is a significant challenge for SARs. Different approaches have been recommended, some rooted in systems theory. The critique of SCRs challenges those now engaged in SARs to reflect on how transformational change can be achieved to improve the quality of adult safeguarding policy and practice.

The paper extends the thematic analysis of available reviews that focus on work with adults who self-neglect, further building on the evidence base for practice. The paper also contributes new perspectives to the process of conducting SARs by using the analysis of themes and recommendations within this data set to evaluate the critique that reviews are insufficiently systemic, fail to engage those involved in reviewed cases and in their repetitive conclusions demonstrate that lessons are not being learned.

The purpose of this article is to explore findings from the children's services mapping (CSM) policy monitoring exercise on the implementation of Children's Trust arrangements in England in 2008 and 2009. It outlines progress made in implementation in the context of debates on Children's Trusts and partnership working, considering where progress was being made and where implementation was less well developed. The future of partnership working in children's services and the role of the data collection in public service policy monitoring are discussed.

Responses are from a sub‐set of 74 local authorities to a self‐completion questionnaire on Children's Trust implementation in 2008 and 2009 as part of the CSM annual policy monitoring exercise.

Findings, presented within the context of Government policy on children's services reform and literature on partnership working, indicate increases in the number of Children's Trusts implementing joint and strategic working. However, not all agencies under a statutory duty were represented on the Board and joint commissioning arrangements had declined.

The findings and discussion consider the limitations of the method of data collection.

This paper presents the most recent information on implementing Children's Trust arrangements, drawing on responses from 49 per cent of local authority areas. Data from two years of the CSM collection alongside earlier research findings indicate progress at the strategic level, but careful reading of the data and literature also suggests an increasingly challenging environment for establishing and maintaining partnership working within children's services.

This paper aims to critically examine the idea that devolution in Wales, compared with England, brings a decisive shift in the delivery of children's services and, by extension, challenges our assumption that the Children Act 1989 remains as a primary unifying force in child welfare legislation.

The paper primarily addresses those matters pertaining to public law under parts III‐V of the Act that give force to core functions within the personal social services in Wales and England. It looks at the Act from the viewpoint of devolution in Wales.

The evolution of services, new policy frameworks and changes to the UK political architecture since the implementation of the Act have transformed the delivery of children's services. The 1989 Act remains prominent but such changes have brought a very different shape and purpose to the occupational world in which the Act was first launched in Wales and England.

The paper shows that it is much less clear if the 1989 Act can be “read off” today – as perhaps it could when it was first enacted – as an inclusive encoding of what local authorities and their partners should and must do for children.