Islington LBC and Camden LBC

This award is open to a single council or where appropriate a partnership of councils, or a council-owned company. Private sector partners can enter on a council’s behalf, with the permission of the council itself. Children’s services are very much under pressure, and ever more so in the face of challenges facing families and services since Covid-19 hit, adding to the numbers of potentially vulnerable children. There is an imperative to protect vulnerable children, the importance of early intervention and the changing relationship with schools – all under an intense media and now social spotlight. This award is intended to recognise the success of those councils that adopt a genuinely strategic approach to this vital service area in the face of extraordinary challenges, potentially including the Covid response. Entries can focus either on a specific aspect of the council’s work on children’s services or the entirety of its work on children’s services.

We nominate our child modern slavery project delivered in partnership with the London Borough of Camden for its innovative and ground-breaking response to child safeguarding, decision-making and improving outcomes for child exploitation victims. This project has not only gone above and beyond to identify and refer suspected child victims of modern slavery and provide timely 45 day decisions to determine if they are a victim under the national referral mechanism framework, but has also developed a strong, localised and multi-agency strategic approach to identifying child victims, sharing intelligence and working towards disrupting trafficking networks exploiting children locally.

Attenti Consulting is a specialist consultancy delivering bespoke sustainable solutions to a wide range of health and social care clients. Our work is centred around taking a positive approach to connecting strategic goals with operational practice; improving the quality of outcomes for service users whilst reducing demand pressures by embedding consistent delivery and enhancing the efficiency of services. With a passion to promote best practice across the sector, Attenti also facilitates webinars, commissions research and white papers and hosts events to encourage shared learning and sector-led improvement.