>>Dr Peter Green: So, Welcome everybody and a very good morning to you all. First of all,
I must say thank you to you all for coming. I think it’s brilliant that so many of you
are here. I am going to be your chair and guide for the day, although my professional
interest is in children, today is for all safeguarding both for children and adults.
I expect today to demonstrate the important differences between NHS services for the vulnerable
and I think you can sum this up perhaps by saying that for children it’s a battle for
paramountcy in our considerations whereas for vulnerable adults the battle is about
equity in our approach.
(Clapping from audience)
The point of today is to celebrate what the NHS does for safeguarding both for adults
and children and to learn and share good practice, learn about things that we can develop, improve
and do better, and to network to build relationships; these are really important to the whole of
safeguarding.
>>Professor Jane Cummings: So, during my presentation this morning what I talked about were some
of the 5 big achievements that the safeguarding world and the safeguarding professionals have
made. I also talked about some of the 5 lessons learned and I think there was something really
important for me about people being proud of what they have done for example around
child sexual exploitation, around the prevent agenda, around the modern slavery agenda but
some of the really important lessons are about making sure that people are honest, that they
behave with integrity, that they learn the value of team work and that they speak up
and do the right thing; because for those people who are most vulnerable in our society
that’s such an important role for our safeguarding professionals.
>>Avril Washington: Peter Green and I work very closely together at St George’s, working
with vulnerable children and it was really important today to express the values that
underpin the work we do, yeah we’ve got a lot of head knowledge and yeah we know a
lot of stuff but actually it’s our values and what matters to us, how we work together,
and we talked about love and actually how that love translates to the children that
we work with, again as a sense of real positive regard for those children.
>>Delegate 1: The reason I’ve come today is because I think these learning events are
absolutely key to my understanding of what’s going on nationally and locally and how we
can take the real positive feelings that have come from today and put it back into practice
so it’s a bit re-energising. Delegate 2: I think it’s been a really interesting
a really excellent morning so far, I think one of the things that come across really
strongly is values of professionals who work in safeguarding and the importance of listening
to children; So I think a couple of the talks today have been really excellent.
>>Delegate 3: It’s been a really good day so far, really interesting, I like that fact
there’s a real mix of safeguarding and looked after children’s issues on the agenda, I
think it’s really important. >>Dr Peter Green: It’s really important
that we have a variety of speakers and indeed as broad based an audience as we can master
because safeguarding is a multi-agency problem that’s complex and you need as many people
sitting around the room to discuss the needs of children that you can possibly gather,
that way you get a best view into the life of the child.
>>Tim Campbell: So, today was really important for me to be able to talk on the passionate
subject of safeguarding and it’s the external perspective that I was hoping to bring and
seeing how some of that insight might be valuable to the audience here who deal with some really
hard hitting cases but just to widen that out to see how we can learn from each other
was a really great point from today.
Well, I hope the audience took away from my presentation the power of being positive,
the power of leveraging your networks and the contacts you have within the business
and the focus on the good things that people do particularly when there’s lots of changes,
lots of negativity, it’s the focus on the good work that the actual organisation and
the people do to other people’s lives. Professor Jane Cummings: One of the really
important things to me about these conferences is that it gives people the opportunity to
network, they can learn from each other, celebrate the success but also be aware of what the
future challenges are and to come up with ideas and think through how to address them.
>>Delegate 1: It’s about thinking of children and putting children first within their decision
making whether you’re a commissioner or working directly with children, It’s always
putting children first. >>Avril Washington: It’s not always about
what we know or who we know it’s about how we do it and how we really care about the
children we work with. >>Delegate 4: I think the public are now very
aware of child sexual exploitation, they are becoming increasingly aware of FGM (Female
Genital Mutilation), so that’s another thing that people need to be sighted on I think.
>>Professor Jane Cummings: When you are looking at a vulnerable child or vulnerable adult
it’s really dangerous to wait and sometimes doing the right thing is doing it at that
time. >>Delegate 5: They’re the future and we
need to invest in that now to make sure that they get the future they deserve.