Keeping Blackpool's children safe during lockdown

Blackpool Council chief executive Neil Jack said Children's Services had noticed more concerns being raised about children but said social workers continued to hold face-to-face visits for those cases of greatest concern.

He said between the start of lockdown and the end of April, social workers had visited nearly 1,300 children which is two thirds of all those currently open to children’s social care.

In addition 250 virtual visits had been recorded with 630 children contacted in one of the most recent seven-day periods.

But he warned: "We keep our approach to service delivery under daily review and it is noticeable that issues causing concern are rising in the local community, especially in families that were not open to children’s social care at the start of the lockdown."

Mr Jack says in his report, ahead of a virtual meeting of the council on Monday (May 11): "Despite the disruption caused by the current situation, we are determined to do everything we can to protect children and continue our Children’s Services improvement journey."

He said the service had prepared earlier in March for the possibility of lockdown.

He adds in his report: "Since then we have refined our approach to concentrate as much attention as possible on the children we have the greatest concerns over – only these children will now be in receipt of face-to-face visits by social workers.

"Other children open to the service now get 'virtual visits', using technology with which the family is familiar, or by phone.

"All social workers are now working remotely, with the exception of a reduced skeleton duty staff at the front door."

Mr Jack said initially there had been a "significant decline in referrals from the general public and other agencies, but this has risen over the past two weeks, giving us confidence our partners are adjusting to the new context where problems may not be so easily visible."

A mailbox set up to to ensure concerns are shared by the different partner agencies saw schools provide information about 273 children in March rising to 583 during April.

The Children's Commissioner for England Anne Longfield has warned lockdown had removed many of the usual ways of identifying children at risk, and the scale of the challenge in keeping them safe was enormous.