Section 11 Audit and Organisational Safeguarding Assessment (OSA)
Under Section 11 of the Children Act (2004) the WSCP is required to assess the effectiveness of safeguarding arrangements in Wakefield.
Section 11 places a duty on a range of organisations, agencies and individuals to ensure their functions and any services that they contract out are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
The WSCP undertakes a biennial (every other year) audit which requires services who are named under Section 11, or are a commissioned service in Wakefield, to complete and return a self-assessment. The services named under S11 of the Children Act are listed here.
JTAI
Managing Allegations and Concerns About Those Who Work or Volunteer with Children
Key Safeguarding Forms, Tools, Standards & Frameworks
Learning from Reviews & Audits
One Minute Guides
Procedures
Safeguarding Babies & Infants
Wakefield Child Death Arrangements
What is the purpose of the S11 audit?
- Provides the WSCP with assurance of the effectiveness of services to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children and young people, and the level of compliance with statutory requirements
- Provide services with an opportunity to review, evaluate, and update their safeguarding arrangements as part of self-assessment, identify good practice and areas to be developed
- Help services to identify their level of compliance with local safeguarding arrangements in Wakefield
- To extrapolate good practice and learning
- To assist services in the collation of evidence for any future inspections they may have
How will completing the Assessment benefit my organisation?
- Provides evidence that safeguarding is a priority within your organisation.
- Provides evidence that your organisation works closely with Children Safeguarding Assurance Partnership (CASP) and understands it’s roles and responsibilities.
- Demonstrates compliance with relevant legislation (e.g. Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018, Keeping Children Safe in Education, Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework).
- Provides evidence of reflective practice.
- Provides evidence of reflective practice.
- Feeds into development/improvement work for your organisation.
- Identifies good practice and areas for development within your organisation.
Organisational Safeguarding Assessment (OSA)
In January 2023 the new West Yorkshire-wide Organisational Safeguarding Assessment (OSA) was launched. This allows organisations to complete their S11 return via a single electronic assessment and submit directly to the appropriate local authority.
Before undertaking the Organisational Safeguarding Assessment:
- For organisations which provide services in more than one district in West Yorkshire, the OSA now allows for one single assessment to be submitted to the relevant safeguarding partnerships.
- Colleagues completing the assessment on behalf of their service for the first time will need to register and create an account to begin. Check your junk and spam folder if you do not receive a registration email.
- There is the option to save an assessment in draft prior to its final submission and come back to it.
- Within the assessment form, under each section/question, there are additional guidance notes and prompts to aid in answering the questions along with assigning a Red, Amber, Green (RAG) rating per question.
- The self-assessment asks for evidence to support the RAG rating and allows organisations to outline any areas where they have identified opportunities for further development.
- On completion of your self-assessment, you can download an action plan which will highlight any amber and red ratings to allow your service to quickly identify areas for improvement.
- Please be patient if you experience any teething problems. If problems do occur, or you have any questions please email wscp@wakefield.gov.uk.
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Organisational Safeguarding Assessment User GuideShow details
Useful Resources
- Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018
- Wakefield Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP) Annual Report 2021-2022
- Wakefield Safeguarding Children Partnership (WSCP) Annual Report 2022-2023
