Safeguarding children & young people

“Every Child in Manchester is safe, happy, healthy and successful. To achieve this we will: be child-centred; listen to and respond to children and young people; focus on strengths and resilience and; take early action.”

Our values underpin and guide the work we do and are promoted by all partners:

• all children should be safe from abuse and neglect
• we prioritise the safety of children over everything else we do
• we are committed to the changing needs of all children, particularly those who are vulnerable to risk
• we collaborate with agencies and challenge them in a shared responsibility to safeguard children
• we are dedicated to early help
• we listen to children, young people, families, our practitioners and their managers – their involvement shapes what we do.

Manchester Safeguarding Partnership (MSP) is a statutory multi-agency partnership established under the Children Act 2004 and subsequent legislation such as Working Together 2018.

We are not an operational body – our role is to monitor the quality and consistency of safeguarding practice and training across all our partner agencies, ensuring continuous improvement in practice and contributing to the broader planning, commissioning and delivery of services.

Our main purpose is to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in Manchester. This is done by coordinating and challenging the safeguarding work of tour partners and ensuring that what they do is effective.

Our aim is that every child has the opportunity to reach their full potential. This means that:

• all children grow up in a safe environment
• all children and young people achieve their best in education, are ready for work, and have skills for life
• all children grow up healthy and have improved life chances and
• children who are looked after achieve at least as good outcomes as those who are not.

All partners are expected to support this aim and to deliver the highest standard of service.

Our members are people with a strategic role in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children within their organisation.

They are expected to be able to:

• speak for their organisation with authority
• commit their organisation on policy and practice matters
• hold their organisation to account.