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30th December 2024
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Statutory multi-agency meeting
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This request relates to the statutory multi-agency meeting or discussion that considers whether child protection enquiries should be initiated. I recognise that this process is known by different names across the UK (for example, Child Protection Strategy Meeting, Strategy Discussion, Inter-agency Referral Discussion, or another equivalent term). Please provide data for the equivalent first child protection strategy meeting/discussion used by your authority. Please provide the following information for the financial years 2020/21 and 2025/26. If your authority cannot provide financial-year data but holds calendar-year data, please provide the closest available equivalent and specify the reporting period used.
For this request, a strategy discussion/meeting episode means one or more strategy discussions or strategy meetings held about the same safeguarding concern for the same child. Where more than one strategy discussion or meeting was held about the same concern for the same child, please count these as one episode. Where the same child was the subject of strategy discussions or meetings relating to separate safeguarding concerns during the year, please count these as separate episodes. Please provide the following information separately for each reporting year.
1. Number of strategy discussion/meeting episodes. Please provide:
• The total number of first strategy discussion/meeting episodes.
• Please count only the first strategy discussion or meeting for each episode and exclude subsequent review or repeat strategy meetings relating to the same safeguarding episode.
Please break these data down by the age of the child at the date of the first strategy discussion/meeting in the episode.
2. Number of unique children. Please provide:
• The number of unique children who were the subject of one or more first strategy discussion/meeting episodes during the year.
Please break these data down by the age of the child at the date of their first strategy discussion/meeting in that reporting year.
3. Age categories - Where possible, please use the following age groups:
• unborn
• under 1
• 1–4
• 5–9
• 10–15
• 16–17
• 18 and over (where included within children's social care data)
• age not recorded
If your authority records age differently, please provide the closest available age bands.
4. Outcome of the first strategy discussion/meeting
For both Questions 1 and 2, please provide a breakdown by the recorded outcome of the first strategy discussion/meeting.
Where possible, please include whether the first strategy discussion/meeting resulted in:
• child protection enquiries (or the equivalent statutory investigation) being initiated (for example, Section 47 enquiries in England and Wales);
• child protection enquiries not being initiated;
• referral to another statutory assessment or support pathway;
• Child Protection Conference (or equivalent) convened;
• no further child protection action;
• another recorded outcome (please specify);
• outcome not recorded or unclear.
If your authority records outcomes differently, please provide the recorded outcome categories used and a brief explanation.
5. Context of the safeguarding concern
For both Questions 1 and 2, please provide a further breakdown by the recorded context of the safeguarding concern.
Where recorded, please classify the concern as:
• Intra-familial (interfamilial) harm – concerns relating to parents, carers, household members or family members, including abuse, neglect, domestic abuse or other harm arising primarily within the child's family or home environment.
• Extra-familial harm – concerns relating to abuse, exploitation or harm arising primarily outside the child's family or home context, including child sexual exploitation, child criminal exploitation, trafficking, serious youth violence, peer-on-peer abuse, online abuse, or harm occurring in schools, communities or other extra-familial settings.
• Both intra-familial and extra-familial harm recorded.
• Other, unclear or not recorded.
If your recording system does not use these categories, please provide the closest available recorded categories together with a brief explanation of how they correspond to the categories above. If this information is not held, please state that it is not held.
6. Definitions and recording practice
If it is not possible to provide both the episode count and the unique child count using the definitions above, please provide the closest available data and explain:
• how the figures have been counted;
• whether children can appear more than once in the episode count;
• any differences between your recording practice and the definitions used in this request.
Where local terminology differs from that used in this request, please provide the equivalent data collected by your authority.
If any part of this request is not held in the requested format, I would be grateful if you could provide the closest available equivalent data.
If complying with the entire request would exceed the appropriate cost limit, please contact me under your duty to advise and assist so that the request may be refined.