Staffordshire Police told to improve how it protects children

Staffordshire Police has improved in some of the ways it protects children, but it still needs to improve the quality of its investigations, a new report has found.

His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) re-inspected the force in March 2023, after an initial inspection in 2021 found systemic failings and made 15 recommendations for improvement.

In the latest visit, inspectors found that Staffordshire Police had introduced an action plan to improve its services to children, leading to more effective:

• structure and leadership roles for overseeing all aspects of child protection;

• use of IT systems, so that staff have access to the information and resources they need to complete their duties;

• contribution to multi-agency child protection arrangements;

• responses to online child sexual abuse; and

• management of registered sex offenders.

However, inspectors also found that some issues identified in the previous inspection were still present and the force needs to improve in several areas, including:

• the quality of its child protection investigations;

• risk assessment and allocation of responses by the force contact centre;

• responses to children reported missing from home;

• the accuracy of recording details of children’s ethnicity and cultural heritage; and

• processes to assess and share information with other organisations to help protect children.

The inspectorate has said that, within six weeks, Staffordshire Police should provide an updated action plan.

What the inspectors say

HM Inspector of Constabulary, Wendy Williams said:

“Staffordshire Police is committed to improving its child protection services and addressing the issues raised in our 2021 inspection, evidenced by the introduction of a dedicated action plan.

“The force has made several positive changes to improve the ways it protects vulnerable children, including better clarity in its senior leadership and governance arrangements.

“With that said, some of the issues highlighted in our initial inspection still haven’t been fully addressed. For example, the quality of its investigations must be improved to better safeguard children and bring offenders to justice.

“We will continue to work closely with the force to monitor its progress and expect to see an updated action plan within six weeks, which sets out how it will make further improvements.”

What Staffordshire Police say

Assistant Chief Constable, Becky Riggs said:

“We are committed to improving our child protection services, and addressing the issues raised in our previous inspection which was noted by HMICFRS who saw our detailed action plan.

“We have made a number of positive changes to improve how we protect vulnerable children and have restructured our public protection unit, leadership and governance. Six of the 15 recommendations have been achieved including improving IT, training, our structure, attendance at multi-agency case conferences, our approach to those who pose a risk to children online and our sex offender management unit.

“We worked with specialists to review the capabilities of our public protection unit which has resulted in an investment in staffing, as we recognise there is more work to do. HMICFRS have asked for a detailed action plan within the next six weeks which sets out how we will make further progress around the outstanding recommendations.

“As part of this, we will continue to improve the quality of our investigations, to better safeguard children and bring those responsible for harming them to justice. We’re focused on a number of areas including our quality of investigations involving missing children, the identification of vulnerable children, using evidence from audits, our information sharing with partners and our child exploitation and online crime investigation teams. We are working with our partners to redesign the system for information sharing to ensure we have clear pathways to enable frontline officers and staff to be able to access the right help and support from the appropriate agency at the earliest opportunity when we identify any concerns for the welfare of a child.

“We’re also working with our contact centre colleagues to ensure our risk assessment process is robust and resources are sent appropriately to incidents involving children, recognising that their vulnerability is vitally important and that we need to understand and think about the voice of a child.

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