About Walsall Safeguarding Partnership

Our Vision

Our vision is for all agencies to work together and effectively build resilience and empower communities in responding to abuse, neglect, and exploitation, and to widely promote the message that safeguarding is everybody’s business in that:

Abuse of adults with care and support needs and of children (our 4^th Partners) is not tolerated.
People know what to do if abuse happens or is suspected.
We will ask, listen and act on the experience of our 4^th Partners, parents and carers to ensure the right help at the right time at the right quality.
There will be no wrong door so we are assured that all organisations and staff will be proactive in their learning and development and in working together effectively to respond to abuse, neglect and exploitation.

The vision for all adults with care and support needs and all children in Walsall is:

WSP recognises that the ability to protect oneself from abuse, neglect or harm will vary from person to person in the diverse communities across Walsall. WSP will support our 4^th Partners through meaningful inclusion and promotion of equality and diversity amongst our partners, organisations and their service delivery. WSP will work to best practice ensuring the Partnership is culturally competent, respects difference, celebrates diversity and is committed to removing barriers that discriminate in safeguarding practices and outcomes. We are committed to working inclusively with our 4th Partners to ensure equal access to information and advice and ensuring their assessed needs for help and support is provided at the right time, at the right quality, and is consistently delivered by WSP member organisations and services.

Our Ambition

Walsall Safeguarding Partnership has agreed that its shared ambitions for 2023-25 are:

Improving our visibility with and amongst local communities and across the Partnership;
Embedding core values of equality, diversity and inclusion in all tiers of the WSP sub-structure and multi-agency safeguarding practice;
Developing a stronger culture of working together to keep children, young people and adults at risk safe;
Increasing the involvement (ask, listen and act) of children and, young people and adults in our work;
Developing a culturally competent, confident, knowledgeable and curious workforce who are supported to work together and deliver their safeguarding responsibilities;
Ask, listening to and acting on the experiences of practitioners and the learning from data and assurance activity, to improve the quality of the safeguarding response to children, young people and adults in need and at risk.

Our Purpose

It is important to note that WSP is not involved in operational practice. Our overarching purpose is to ensure that agencies work in partnership to deliver joined-up services that safeguard adults with care and support needs and children and young people from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. We do this by:

Gaining assurance that local safeguarding arrangements are in place as defined by the Care Act 2014 and it’s statutory guidance and as defined by the Children Act 2018 and Working Together 2018 statutory guidance.
Working collaboratively to prevent abuse and neglect, where this is possible.
Ensuring partner agencies know what to do and are effective when abuse and neglect has occurred and give timely and proportionate responses.
Gaining assurance that the principles of Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) are central to safeguarding, and practice is person-centred, and outcome focused.
Gaining assurance that practice is child-centred and considers the voice and lived experience of children, young people and their families or carers.
Striving for continuous improvement in safeguarding practice and supporting partner agencies to embed learning from local regional and national reviews and multi-agency audits.
Work across other statutory / strategic multi-agency partnerships to ensure any cross-cutting themes arising from our respective safeguarding activity, (performance data or assurance work) are identified and addressed.