The core statutory guidance document ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ sets out the way in which the training and development of staff and volunteers should be undertaken to help them safeguard and promote the welfare of children effectively. The guidance states that it is the responsibility of employers to identify adequate resources and support for multi-agency training. It is the responsibility of the local authorities (LAs), with their partners in children’s trusts, and in discussion with the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) to decide, which bodies should commission or deliver the training. In some local areas it is the LSCB themselves who are commissioned to deliver the multi-agency training.
The Department only has data on this final type of training—delivered by LSCBs themselves. LSCBs were invited to take part in a voluntary survey in December 2006. In those survey returns, planned expenditure on the delivery of training in 2006-07 across those LSCBs for which we have data—around two thirds of all LSCBs in England—totalled around £2 million. If this is representative of all LSCBs then across the whole of England we could expect LSCBs to have spent around £3 million on safeguarding training in 2006-07. However this LSCB expenditure will be only part of the overall expenditure on multi-agency safeguarding training.