All this week, professionals in the Isle of Man are marking Safeguarding Week - with the theme of 'All Age Exploitation'.
Today we're turning our attention to the Island's Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub - or 'MASH'.
Siobhán Fletcher finds out more.
Manx Newscast
Manx Newscast: Safeguarding Week - What is the MASH?
Hi, I'm Siobhan Fletcher and welcome along to the latest edition of our newscast. Now as we've been hearing all this week, professionals in the Isle of Man are marking safeguarding week, and today we're talking mash, and no, I don't mean potatoes. If you've heard any of our series of special reports and our newscasts with the various agencies, you'll have heard of the multi-agency safeguarding hub. But what is the mash, and how do the various teams we've spoken to this week fit into the picture? Coming up now, we're going to have the extracts from those interviews where each professional explains their role and how the mash works. My name is Sam Cannell. I am the detective inspector for protecting vulnerable people within the consubulary. Perhaps you mentioned the multi-agency safeguarding hub there in your answers. That's the moment that I'm interested in looking at this week. So what is mash, I suppose? It's known more generally as, and how does it work? Okay, so the multi-agency safeguarding hub came together when, as a partnership, we realized that our information sharing could be better, it could be slicker, and it's certainly what the national movement is to in terms of multi-agencies moving together. And effectively what it looks like, there's no mystery to it, it's a bunch of professionals all representing different agencies working in the same room, in the same environment, and being able to share information, really, really quick time, in order for there to be a much more rapid response to a concern. So that could be a general concern about child neglect or abuse, or it could be, for instance, a concern around child sexual or criminal exploitation. So it's multi-agency, obviously, we're hearing from a few different elements of it this week. How does the police slide into that, then, when you have these conversations, I suppose, how does that work? So the constabulary is amongst all the agencies that the largest referrer of safeguarding information and concern into the hub, and that's really because we go out on a day-to-day basis multiple times a day into people's homes, and we come across situations, and we respond to calls for service, nine and nine calls, and the likes, to concerns within the community. So we are the largest referrer of information of concern, because generally, when we come across a safeguarding concern, be it could be the condition of a home address in which a child is living, or it could be we've come across a child who is dealing drugs on the street, for instance, and if a child is dealing drugs on the street and they're under 18, well, actually, they're probably being exploited by someone, and they're being either paid with money or in other ways to do that, and that is exploitation, and that's what we see, and I think to a certain extent, in recent years, maybe we've not acknowledged that that's what it is, but that's what it is. We need to label it and we need to tackle it. My name's Samantha Holmes, and I'm the name professional for contextual safeguarding. My name's Terria Banks. I'm the head of safeguarding for children and adults, and I cover the acute and community health services. I suppose you've both mentioned the different agencies that you all feed into. One of them that we've talked about this week is MASH, so can you tell me then, once you've sort of had this red flag raised really on a case, you've had, you know, you try and reach for more, what do the conversations look like then across the multi-agent, how do you all work together? Okay, so if we recognise any immediate risk, we can respond collectively within a few minutes, which is beneficial for MASH, so prior to the MASH, we put the hospital, the police had been at the police station, the social workers had somewhere being here, we're all together now, so we will come into this room and we have what we call a strategy meeting, and a strategy meeting is convened under the Children Young Persons Act, and we will bring our information to the table, so to speak, so we'll look at the health system, we'll say that the child's been an ED, what the health needs are, the police will bring their police intelligence and what they know, and the social workers, and we then make a decision, does this meet a threshold, are we that concerned that we're saying this child, is it significant risk of harm, and if that's the case, then we'll do a visit more or less straight away, so that immediacy has been amazing since we got the MASH together, and that response to risk, et cetera, yeah. Have you seen a difference then in your roles then since that's before? Absolutely, yeah, I mean, so we now have the duty role, so we have a person from the Safeguarding Children's Health team that is available Monday to Friday, who can respond to any of those concerns, particularly as well if there is a child, obviously if there are children's ward, then we can visit them on children's ward, but for those that are over 16, we can actually go out and visit those children on the wards as well to get that timely information and then feed that back very, very quickly here into MASH, and it's just that Safeguarding is now more visible, which is really, really good in terms of keeping children safe and capturing their voices and making those timely multi-agency decisions, so yeah, absolutely. Also in the respect of the missing from homes, because we are now doing, we've got Sam doing, in the main, most of the return home interviews, they're done within 72 hours, so for example, if somebody goes missing on Friday, when Sam comes into work on Monday morning, she will be out, where have you been, who are you with, and some of those hot, what we call hot spots, we can then bring that information back to the police and we start seeing frequent addresses, frequent names of males or females of concern coming up, and also with victims. Hello, I'm Leslie Walker, I'm the independent chair of the Isle of Man's safe guarding board, so I'm completely independent of all the agencies that make up the board on the island, and much of this work came in the Isle of Man because of the near death of a child and a review occurred by a nationally renowned author that's done a lot of work around the country and this, that really brought home the exploitation was a very live issue on the island, and that everybody needs to be really cognizant of, focused on being able to recognise the signs and to know more importantly, where to get help and support. And I guess just for my own reference, that case you're referring to, is that what fed into the exploitation report you were referring to earlier, the 2021 report? Yes, yes, that's what led to the new strategy and ways of working and new supports, and agencies have responded in such a positive way in terms of coming together, we now have a multi-agency safeguarding hub on the island, which is the independent charity that has a very significant move forward in bringing all of the agencies together, the sharing information, intelligence, working really closely together in a joined up way, to ensure that adults and children are kept safe on the island, so that's a great initiative, because that's the only real way to tackle some of the complexities around exploitation, as I said, often run through organised crime and therefore, who are skilled at finding ways to try to avoid or cover up their activities, because they're for a huge financial gain for some of those individuals and organised crime groups. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manks Radio newscast, you are obviously someone with exquisite taste. 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