Board membership and structure

Frequency: Board meetings are held quarterly.

Membership: Membership is limited to Directors and Assistant Directors, or equivalent, from the key statutory agencies and voluntary sector leads who are accountable for implementing safeguarding legislation within their agencies. Sub group Chairs and Safeguarding leads will attend the Board in an advisory capacity.

Remit: The Oldham Safeguarding Adults Board is strategic in its focus and retains overall responsibility for the core functions and additional activities undertaken in its name. The Board’s remit is focused on senior accountability, exceptions reporting and safeguarding trends that require dynamic senior leadership. The remit also covers the legal functions of the SAB, joint high-profile campaigns and the influencing and shaping of regional and national policy. The Board undertakes its strategic work through a number of specialist multi-agency Sub Groups.

Frequency: The Statutory Leadership Group meet monthly.

Membership: Membership is limited to the three statutory accountable leads for adult safeguarding and Local Authority and NHS Clinical Commissioning Group commissioners.

Remit: The Statutory Leadership Group will focus on the delivery of their safeguarding legislative duties. The remit includes system wide leadership and oversight based on intelligence from a Partnership Data Dashboard; managing one-off safeguarding escalations by exception; and identifying barriers to effective partnership working that need escalating to the Board. The Group is responsible for coordinating information for the bi-annual Safeguarding Forum with the Chief Executive of the Council and Elected members but does not have any final decision making authority on behalf of the Board.

Frequency: The Learning Hub meets quarterly as a minimum.

Membership: The membership is inclusive, its is anticipated that people will be self-selecting depending on the safeguarding topic. Membership is open to Heads of Service, operational managers, practitioners, director and assistant director level, children’s professionals and other specialist teams.

Remit:  The Learning Hub provides the space and insight to share best practice and problem solve safeguarding concerns identified at national, regional and local levels. The Learning Hub incorporates the OSAB adult voice network, exploring opportunities for purposeful and meaningful engagement, and includes two-way communication between strategic leads, practitioners and local communities. There is a two-way flow of communication between the Hub and the Board.

Frequency: The Sub Group meets every six weeks and extraordinary meetings are arranged to screen Safeguarding Adult Review referrals.

Membership: The membership brings together representatives from partner agencies in Oldham working with adults at risk who have particular responsibilities for safeguarding.

Remit: The group oversees the Board’s work in relation to Safeguarding Reviews and will be responsible for developing a proportionate Safeguarding Quality Assurance framework to ensure compliance with multi-agency safeguarding policies and procedures and to ensure consistent standards of quality are being met. This combined remit ensures that understanding and learning from Safeguarding Reviews form the basis of Quality Assurance and Audit processes. The remit will ensure a consistent approach to the understanding, evaluation and final sign off of actions within Safeguarding Review Action Plans.

Frequency: The Sub Group meets every six weeks and associated Task and Finish Groups are established to complete focused tasks.

Membership: The membership brings together representatives from partner agencies in Oldham working with adults at risk who have particular responsibilities for safeguarding.

Remit: The group is responsible for developing, reviewing, and quality assuring multi-agency policies and procedures which seek to discharge the statutory responsibilities of the Board. The group is also responsible for developing a multi-agency workforce development strategy and training programme to create an environment where excellent practice can flourish which will improve the outcomes for adults with care and support needs. This combined remit ensures that understanding and learning from the development of policies and procedures form the basis of training and workforce development resources.

The Safeguarding Transitions Sub Group evaluates the current performance of transition initiatives and asks specific groups to offer assurance that transitions are appropriately in place. This Sub Group provides assurances to both the Safeguarding Adults Board and the Oldham Safeguarding Children Partnership and ensures an overview of the work that is being undertaken regarding transitions in Oldham in relation to the following workstreams:

• Children's Social Care to Adult Social Care
• Youth Justice to Adult Justice
• Young People's Mental Health to Adult Mental Health
• Young People's Substance Misuse to Adult Substance Misuse
• Primary to Secondary to Further Education.

The Complex and Contextual Safeguarding Sub Group has strategic oversight of what is done by Oldham Safeguarding partners, individually and collectively, to safeguard and protect individuals at risk from all forms of exploitation. The Sub Group provides challenge and support within the context of the operational delivery of the Sexual Exploitation, Criminal Exploitation, Modern Slavery and Organised Crime workstreams. This Sub Group provides assurances to both the Safeguarding Adults Board and the Oldham Safeguarding Children Partnership.

Frequency: The Sub Group meets every month.

Membership: The membership brings together representatives from partner agencies in Oldham working with adults at risk with those with Communications expertise.

Remit: This group is a joint initiative with the Oldham Safeguarding Children Partnership. The Sub Group develops and oversees the Communications Strategy regarding the work of the safeguarding partnerships. This includes supporting the communication platforms used by the partnerships to communicate with key stakeholders including social media and websites and to manage media related queries.

The Board and its Sub Groups are supported by the OSAB Business Unit, which helps the board to fulfil its role.