Guidance for Section 47, Children Act 1989, investigation by Children's Social Services.
Case reference FOI2024/01065
Received 20 June 2024
Published 18 July 2024
Request
With reference to Freedom of Information Act 2000 I would like to request all information and documents relating to Guidance for implementing Section 47, Children Act 1989, investigation by Children's Social Services.
Of particular relevance is the guidance used for determining threshold required for:
Children Act 1989, section 47, Local authority’s duty to investigate,
(1) Where a local authority—
(b) have reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm,
Reasonable cause is a term used in law to describe a situation where there is a good reason to believe. This belief must be based on facts and cannot be just a suspicion. Ref: Black’s Law Dictionary, https://thelawdictionary.org/reasonable-and-probable-cause/
If no guidance to establish “reasonable cause” exists please state, Herefordshire Council (Children and Families Directorate) have no guidance procedure for this.
CLARIFICATION:
Referrals to Herefordshire Council, (Children and Families Directorate) using MARF system result in a strategy discussion. A decision is made at this meeting and in the majority of cases you are assigned a social worker who will make an assessment and offer services.
In a few cases the decision made at this meeting is that section 47 enquiry is required under The Children Act 1989. This moves things up a significant level and allows statuary laws to be engaged.
So what guidance document is used to decide the escalation from your normal assessment processes to section 47 enquiry? What are the facts this must be based upon?
Response
With reference to Freedom of Information Act 2000 I would like to request all information and documents relating to Guidance for implementing Section 47, Children Act 1989, investigation by Children's Social Services.
Of particular relevance is the guidance used for determining threshold required for:
Children Act 1989, section 47, Local authority’s duty to investigate,
(1) Where a local authority—
(b) have reasonable cause to suspect that a child who lives, or is found, in their area is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm,
Reasonable cause is a term used in law to describe a situation where there is a good reason to believe. This belief must be based on facts and cannot be just a suspicion. Ref: Black’s Law Dictionary, https://thelawdictionary.org/reasonable-and-probable-cause/
If no guidance to establish “reasonable cause” exists please state, Herefordshire Council (Children and Families Directorate) have no guidance procedure for this.
CLARIFICATION:
Referrals to Herefordshire Council, (Children and Families Directorate) using MARF system result in a strategy discussion. A decision is made at this meeting and in the majority of cases you are assigned a social worker who will make an assessment and offer services.
In a few cases the decision made at this meeting is that section 47 enquiry is required under The Children Act 1989. This moves things up a significant level and allows statuary laws to be engaged.
So what guidance document is used to decide the escalation from your normal assessment processes to section 47 enquiry? What are the facts this must be based upon?
A) The Service Area have advised that they follow the procedures on the Regional Child Protection Procedures for West Midlands website, and it should be noted that S47 only requires “reasonable cause to suspect” and not “reasonable cause to believe”.
The requested information is publically available on the Regional Child Protection Procedures for West Midlands website and can be viewed via the following link:
1.9 Child protection enquiries | West Midlands Safeguarding Children Group (procedures.org.uk)
As such we consider this information to be exempt under Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 because it is reasonably accessible to you via other means. Please take this letter as a refusal notice under S17 of the Act.
Documents
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