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Stop
it Now! Surrey
Child Protection in Surrey
Safeguarding children
in Surrey is co-ordinated by the Surrey Safeguarding Children Board.
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Below is some information explaining who the Board are and how they
work to safeguard children in Surrey. There is also advice on what
you should do and who you should contact if you are concerned about
a child's safety or well-being. Please note that from 21st August
2006 all referrals concerning children should be made through the
Surrey Contact Centre, telephone number 08456 009 009.
What is the Surrey Safeguarding Children
Board?
Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) exist in
all areas of the country and work locally to protect children. The
Surrey Safeguarding Children Board (SSCB) is an inter-agency forum
which brings together the Local Authority, police, health workers
and all others in the community responsible for child protection
to help them work more effectively to safeguard children from abuse
and neglect.
Surrey Safeguarding Children
Board has representatives from the fields of:
- Education
- Health
- Housing
- Legal Services
- Police
- Probation
- Social Care
- Voluntary Organisations
The Responsibilities of the
Surrey Safeguarding Children Board are:
- To develop and agree local policies and procedures
for inter-agency work to protect children, within the national
framework
- To audit and evaluate how well local services work
together to protect children
- To put in place objectives and performance indicators
- To encourage effective working relationships between
services and professional groups, based on trust and mutual understanding
- To ensure agreement across agencies about operational
definitions and thresholds
- To improve local ways of working based on knowledge
from national and local experience and research, and to ensure
lessons learned are acted upon
- To undertake case reviews where a child has died
or in certain circumstances has been seriously harmed
- To help improve the quality of child protection
work through inter agency training and development
- To raise awareness within the wider community of
the need to safeguard children and promote their welfare
The Surrey Safeguarding Children Board's remit is
built upon Central Government guidance. In 1999 the Department of
Health, Home Office and Department for Education issued "Working
Together to Safeguard Children". This document contains guidance
on how all agencies should work together to safeguard and promote
the welfare of children
What to do if you are concerned about a child or young person
If you think that a child or young person under the
age of 18 years old, who lives in Surrey, is being abused or neglected,
you should 'phone the Surrey Contact Centre on 0845 009 009 or Surrey
Police.
Outside of office hours and at weekends and public
holidays, the emergency service should be contacted by telephoning
01483 517898. In an emergency, always dial 999.
If you are a member of the public, you will be asked
for your name and address and details of the child and the concerns
you have. These are to help Surrey Children's Service to make further
enquiries and to contact you again if necessary. Information about
your name and address will be treated as confidential. You will
be informed if it is necessary to identify you if court proceedings
are required to protect the child or to prosecute an abuser.
If you are a professional worker with information
or concerns about a child or young person, you should 'phone the
Contact Centre (0845 009 009). In addition, you should also confirm
your referral in writing as quickly as possible. If you are in doubt
about making a referral to Surrey Children's Services, you should
consult, within your agency, with the manager or practitioner with
designated responsibility for child protection.
Surrey
Police
How do the police
know where the sex offenders are?
Surrey Police, like other police forces
operate within the Sex Offenders' Act 1997 as amended by the Criminal
Justice and Court Services Act of 2000. This means that all convicted
offenders who fall within the criteria must 'register' with the
police within 3 days of their conviction or release from prison.
This is monitored by the police, who receive notification from the
courts following conviction and both the prisons and probation service,
following an offender's release into the community. Failure to register
is an offence, which can carry a term of imprisonment if convicted.
What
else does a registered offender have to do?
Those on the register are required to notify the police
if they change their name or address and are also required to notify
if they plan to travel outside the UK. Again failure to comply is
an offence. All forces exchange information about the movements
of such offenders and a national computerised database has been
developed to facilitate this procedure.
How closely does Surrey Police
monitor registered sex offenders?
It is worth noting that Surrey Police
monitors all potentially dangerous offenders who live in the community.
This not only includes registered sex offenders, but also those
who are suspected of being involved in sexual offending and some
high-risk violent offenders.
The police work in full co-operation with other agencies,
which include the Surrey Probation Service, Social Services and
the local authority, in the monitoring of these offenders.
The Home Office has recently published a guide to
Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). This guidance
will place a duty to co-operate on other agencies, which are not
currently involved in the monitoring process. However in Surrey
we already have agreed procedures in place with the agencies that
are involved in the management of such offenders. This MAPPA guide
reflects best practice and Surrey Police will continue to develop
their own procedures to reflect the national requirement.
We are aware through the registration process where
offenders reside and are involved in monitoring all their activities.
Each offender is risk assessed and has in place a risk management
plan, which is reviewed periodically at the monthly multi agency
risk panel & assessment meeting (RAMP).
There is a RAMP on each of the four Police divisions
that cover Surrey. This meeting is chaired by the Police and attended
by representatives from Probation and Social Services. Each case
is reviewed through this process and decisions made to ensure that
sufficient monitoring and case management is in place. This covers
all areas of an offender's life within the community. The aim of
these panels is to ensure the continued safety of the public.
In addition to the RAMP there exists the provision for a multi agency
public protection panel (MAPPP). This forum is used to discuss any
high-risk cases, where the level of concern is over and above the
normal routine monitoring process. This forum provides all agencies
with the ability to ensure that all necessary procedures are in
place to protect the public, and in particular children, from harm.
This may include the sharing of information concerning the offender
to certain parties, for example a school, employer or individual
family members if required. These forums provide the police with
the ability to obtain and share relevant information about each
offender.
Surrey police pro actively monitor offenders who are
believed to represent a high-risk of re offending. All available
Policing techniques will be used. If an offender is deemed to be
following a particular course of conduct then the Police, supported
by the other agencies will seek to obtain a sex offender order restricting
their activities. Again failure to comply with such an order can
lead to a term of imprisonment.
Surrey Police's main partner in the management of
potentially dangerous offenders is the Surrey Probation Service.
Many offenders are released on license when they leave prison, which
allows the Probation Service to place restrictions on them to ensure
they comply with supervision, which may for example, include the
attendance at a sex offender treatment programme. Failure to comply
can and does result in their immediate recall to prison. The Police
actively work with Probation to ensure offenders comply with these
requirements.
Surrey Police and Probation Service in line with the
new MAPPA guidelines have introduced 'lay members'. These are selected
members of the public whose role is to contribute views to the monitoring
and evaluation of the MAPPA within Surrey.
In Surrey we have two such lay members who have observed
all the above detailed procedures.
Who in the Police service carries
out the monitoring of Registered Sex Offenders?
Specialist dedicated Police officers called
Registration and Assessment Officers (RAO), are involved in the
monitoring and registration process.
In addition to working with the statutory agencies, Surrey's RAO's
have established excellent working relationships with organisations
like the Lucy Faithful Foundation and the 'Stop It Now' campaign.
This allows the Police to have access to services, advice and specialist
training to maintain the skills required for this area of work.
What kind of risks might sex
offenders who have been registered as a result of Operation Orr
(Internet child pornography offences) pose to the public?
Each offender is fully risk assessed following
registration and each case will be reviewed through the RAMP process.
Following the risk assessment a management plan will be put in place
to ensure the correct and necessary level of monitoring follows.
Depending on the sentence imposed by the court the individual may
be required to undertake a treatment programme regarding his offending
behaviour. These programs have been successfully undertaken in the
past and are supervised by the probation service. It is the police
view that such programs significantly reduce the likelihood of re-offending.
If the sex offender's list significantly
increases, how will Surrey Police ensure the public is protected?
The current system in place for the monitoring
of offenders is resilient enough to cope with an increase in registered
sex offenders. The situation is kept under review and any decision
regarding the future resourcing of the relevant departments would
be looked at if required. The police and probation service are currently
looking at the structure of joint working and how this can be shaped
to further improve the way we work.
Why can't the public see the
sex offenders register?
Most offenders, including Sex Offenders
are eventually released from prison. This is a fact of our criminal
justice system, which is built around the concept of rehabilitation.
The requirement to become a registered sex offender is governed
by a schedule of offences. This list covers a variety of sexual
offences.
The sex offender's register, as detailed above, provides agencies
with the level of information needed to allow for risk assessment
and monitoring of the offender's activities. This is essential in
their management and treatment. The majority of registered sex offenders
are deemed not to be a risk to the public as a whole because they
co-operate fully with Police and Probation.
The worst case scenario would be if an offender were
victimised, as would be inevitable in some cases. This would result
in them disappearing and failing to co-operate with the authorities.
This would not be in the public interest.
The Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements provide for the
disclosure of information, if required, regarding an individual
sex offender. The process will always consider the needs of the
public over that of the offender in a balanced and informed way.
If the safety of any child or family was at risk then disclosure
to them will be made via agencies such as Social Services, Police
or Probation.
The system of registration allows us to know where
the offenders are, what they are doing, where they are going and
whom they are with. This way we can keep an eye on them and help
to prevent re offending. The alternative is the public knows where
they all live, this will have an impact on them, their families,
who are not to blame and issues such as resourcing to ensure their
basic human rights are not infringed.
Working with such offenders the Police have learnt
from experience that they will panic, go underground and fail to
surface. The result? No monitoring, no sex offender treatment, no
regular risk assessments and reviews. This may lead to offenders
networking and this will lead to re offending.
In Surrey we have a good track record in this
field. It is not, like any system, 100% guaranteed, no system of
supervision in the community is. However we believe this is the
right way to protect the public of Surrey.
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