Keeping Babies Safe

The Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership has made improving the safety of babies a priority.

The 'Three Steps for Baby Safety' strategy has been established to support partner agencies and practitioners who work with families to ensure that the babies in Derby City and Derbyshire remain safe from abuse, neglect and harm.

The objectives of this strategy are clear:

• Learn from local and national reviews to help develop our local services
• For practitioners to have good knowledge of the three steps for baby safety – safe sleep, safe handling, and safe space
• To ensure that all new parents and carers know and understand these three messages
• To ensure that parents and carers know how to make their home safe for the baby
• That all practitioners who have contact with families with babies know and have the confidence to deliver these messages
• For these practitioners to remain professionally curious to ensure that the babies are safe and free from harm

What difference is being made?

If you would like to know more, an Evaluation and Impact Report on Three Steps for Baby Safety sets out progress that has been made locally.

Supporting you in your work

The ongoing work of our Keeping Babies Safe Champions throughout the partner agencies, the learning that is being extracted from safeguarding reviews and the informed development and delivery of a focused training programme are key to delivering this strategy with the ultimate aim of reducing the number of babies who die or who are seriously injured.

Find out who your KBS Champions January 23‌‌ is in your agency, they can help provide advice and a wide range of resources.

The 'Three Steps for Baby Safety' strategy will help you gain a thorough understanding of this critical area of multi-agency work and the role you play in keeping babies safe. Please take time to familiarise yourself with the Strategy, and key documents/assessment tools/resources listed below.

'Promoting the Safety of Babies - Learning from Reviews July 2021‌' provides you with an evidence based understanding of the key learning themes that are central to this piece of work.

Please use the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Partnership procedures and the Keeping Babies Safe Guidance section in the Documents Library to support your work.

Every Baby Matters

The DDSCP Every Baby Matters multi-agency resources have been developed to support practitioners to identify vulnerability factors in families with babies. These research-based resources should support practice, and include a resource poster,  a specific tool to use with families at the early help stage or as part of larger assessments or pieces of work with families and a guidance document explaining the resources and how to use the tool. The resources can also be used to support practice through training, education and supervision.

Every Baby Matters Identifying Vulnerabilities Resource Poster

The aim is the poster is used as a hard copy or electronically to remind practitioners or those that have contact with families to consider the baby in the family, remember the core messages and consider if the family need additional support.

Key messages:

• It matters that all babies are safe.
• It matters that their needs are met immediately.
• It matters that families feel supported.
• It matters that we understand the relationship between babies and their parents/carers.
• It matters that we understand any vulnerabilities or risks that affect a baby’s care and development.

Every Baby Matters Observations and Conversations Tool

This visual tool is to enhance and support practitioners in the early conversations with families about their relationship and parenting of their baby, consider the lived experience of the baby and identify any areas where a family would benefit from additional support. The tool looks at six key areas of consideration for a family with a baby.

• Bonding and attachment
• Your baby's development
• Health and well-being
• Knowledge and expectations
• Community strengths and stressors
• Who is in your baby's life

Every Baby Matters Supportive Guidance

The guidance document explains the resources and how to use the tool including how it can be used with families in the early help stages of support and how the tool can be utilised to support other assessments including during pregnancy.

Safer Sleep Guidance and Co-sleeping Assessment Tool

The DDSCP Multi-agency Safer Sleep Guidance and Co-sleeping Assessment Tool have been developed for all practitioners who support families with babies to understand Safer Sleep messages and practice Safer Sleep with their babies. The risks of unsafe sleep practice are reported locally and nationally; babies can and do die in high - risk bed-sharing situations.

• DDSCP Multi-agency Safer Sleep Guidance
• Co-sleeping Assessment Tool

Training

A new e-learning course Protecting Babies from Harm (Level 2) is available for any professional or volunteer who works directly or indirectly with parents, unborn babies, babies or children and is aimed at raising your awareness of the vulnerability of babies to the risk of harm. The course will support you to:

• understand why babies are vulnerable to abuse and harm
• be able to identify needs and risk factors during baby's development
• know what signs and symptoms to look out for 
• understand the importance of intervening early
• know how to make a referral

The DDSCP Keeping Babies Safe – Level 3 course is available to book for any professional or volunteer who works directly or indirectly with parents, unborn babies, babies or children and those with particular and specialised responsibility for safeguarding children and young people who contribute to assessing, planning, intervening and reviewing the needs of a child where there are safeguarding concerns, including strategic and operational managers. The course will support you to:

• describe the specific vulnerabilities of babies
• understand the risk of infant crying
• have a good knowledge of safe sleep practice, the importance of safe handling and the advice around safe baby equipment and home safety messages
• identify the issues relating to 'Shaken Baby' and bruising in babies
• describe how to develop responsive parenting
• understand learning from child practice reviews to ensure babies thrive
• recognise additional vulnerabilities in families and promote professional curiosity

What should I do if I have concerns about an unborn child, baby or toddler?

The unborn child, babies and toddlers are particularly vulnerable to neglect and abuse and cannot speak for themselves. Child Practice Reviews have consistently illustrated the serious abuse and neglect experienced by babies and toddlers. Any concerns must be taken seriously and acted upon immediately.

If you are concerned about an unborn child, baby or toddler you can find more information in the Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Children Procedures.

Always discuss your concerns with the senior person in your organisation who is responsible for safeguarding and child protection.

If you are a young person, parent or carer, you can contact Children's Social Care to discuss your concerns.

Resources

• Pre-birth Assessment Tool

In Derby and Derbyshire the Multi Agency Protocol for Pre-birth Assessments and interventions and the Pre-birth Delivery Safety Plan. This protocol and safety plan have been developed to support practitioners in their decision making and assessment processes when working with a pregnant woman, her partner and family.

•  Practice Guidance on Bruising in Babies and Children

‌Practice guidance on bruising in babies and children ‌‌is for all practitioners who work with children and families to assist staff to understand the importance of bruising in infants as an indicator of physical abuse and to clarify arrangements in relation to the investigation of bruising in children.

A new animation film, Bruising on Babies, developed by a multi-agency partnership group in Nottinghamshire provides advice to practitioners about seeking an explanation from the babies carers and what action to take if no explanation is provided or an unlikely or inadequate explanation is given. This should be viewed in conjunction with the practice guidance on bruising in babies and children.

• Guidance on managing babies with suspected Birth Marks including Congenital Dermal Melanocytosis (previously blue spot)

Guidance on managing babies with suspected Birth Marks inc Congenital Dermal Melanocytosis (previously blue spot)‌ is for all health practitioners working with babies to ensure that bruising is not overlooked and to reduce the number of inappropriate referrals. 

• Prevention of Non-Accidental Head Injury in Infancy Guidance

The Prevention of non-Accidental Head Injury in Infancy Guidance ‌ has been developed to help reduce to the incidence of shaken baby syndrome.

• The Joint Agency Response to Sudden Unexpected Death in Children in Derby City and Derbyshire

This joint agency guidance on Response to Sudden Unexpected Death in Children is intended for hospital emergency departments,  paediatric teams, rapid response paediatricians, EMAS, social care managers and police to support the response and investigation in sudden unexpected death of children up to 18 years in Derby City and Derbyshire.

•  Managing Risks of Dogs around Children

The briefing has been developed to help practitioner's work with families to help prevent dog bites and attacks.

Resources for parents 

• The following resources have been developed to support parents:

Keeping Babies Safe - Never Ever Shake Your Baby

A new animation, this gives parents and carers practical tips about how to respond when their baby cries for long periods of time, doesn't sleep or settle.

Health in partnership with the Lullaby Trust have developed a Keeping Babies Safe - SIDS leaflet for grandparents to support them while they are caring or supporting in the care of babies.