"LIMITED progress" has been made on protecting children in Blaenau Gwent from abuse, neglect and exploitation, a report has said.

A report into Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council's corporate safeguarding policies by the Wales Audit Office (WAO) has said there remain improvements to be made in the area.

In its report the WAO said it still “has concerns about the council’s corporate arrangements for safeguarding children across all of its directorates and by third parties and stakeholders delivering services on behalf of the council.”

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The review was undertaken by the WAO to seek assurance that the council had acted upon previous national and local recommendations for improvements.

Blaenau Gwent’s commitment to safeguarding children is stated in its corporate plan.

The plan says that it aims to “put effective safeguarding arrangements in place to protect people from harm.”

However, when the WAO undertook the assessment they said several of the recommendations for improvement had only been partially met - or not at all.

The WAO said that while the appropriate staffing appointments had taken place, including the hiring of a lead member for safeguarding, information hadn’t been clearly distributed to staff.

Concerns were also raised over corporate oversight to check that school governors, contractors, agency staff and volunteers are all DBS checked on appointment, or on renewal every three years.

It is also not compulsory for council staff in Blaenau Gwent to undertake safeguarding training - and there are no formal arrangements around who is required to undertake such training.

The report says: “While staff within social services receive an induction to include safeguarding roles and responsibilities, the corporate induction programme for new employees in other council services does not include the corporate safeguarding policy, safeguarding roles and responsibilities or safeguarding training.”

The council established a joint education and learning and social services scrutiny committee in 2017, which meets three times a year to review performance data on safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults.

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The report says: “The council’s constitution reflects this joint scrutiny committee, but it is not included in the corporate safeguarding policy as part of the governance arrangements.”

However, the WAO found that the performance reports to the committee regarding safeguarding do not include the performance of contractors or commissioned services, information on DBS compliance for governors, staff, agency workers, contractors and volunteers, and comparative data from other councils.

The report will be presented to the council’s audit committee in the coming months.