Towards a Public Service Agreement on Safeguarding

Abstract

The brief for this study was to focus on safeguarding as keeping children and young people safe from maltreatment, neglect, violence and sexual exploitation. While this is a useful and appropriate focus, evidence from this study has suggested that this cannot be completely isolated from the other elements of the staying safe outcome areas of Every Child Matters and the recommended measures reflect this.

The study built a rudimentary evidence-based conceptual framework to facilitate the development of Public Service Agreement targets for safeguarding children.

Part one gives an account of the model of safeguarding that was developed and why particular measures have been selected. It draws upon and refers to, evidence presented in more detail in various sections of part two.

Part two gives an account of how the study progressed and discusses the evidence on which we draw to support the measures proposed. Part two describes in detail the process of developing and testing the safeguarding model and the measures to underpin the proposed PSAs.