98 Agree and maintain arrangements for keeping senior managers and Members informed and updated about the state of the service and changes that occur over time. See also Section 5. below on communications. Different agencies priorities need to be reconciled and not viewed competitively. This may be particularly important when making sure Police investigations are fully addressed. Think about referring to your agency’s procedural guidance whether the Pan-Dorset Procedure for the management of the closure of a care home needs to be used if an urgent planned closure is considered because other options for improvement or maintenance are not realistic. Offer advice about a possible meeting with relatives and informal carers and be prepared to fully participate in this. Observations about practice within the service must be maintained as must feedback about ongoing concerns or improvements made. A rota of staff (probably to be drawn from different agencies) may well be needed to ensure systematic monitoring 14. Communication – actions to be taken 14.1 Even if not initially necessary a press statement should be prepared and agreed between the relevant senior managers and Communications Unit for each key agency involved. This should be revised as necessary in the light of changing circumstances and actions over time. It needs to be ready to be issued urgently if circumstances require it. Depending on the severity and critical nature of the LSE the local lead agency may need to provide regular briefing and information to the other agencies involved. This could be frequently required in a large service where different staff are engaged in very diverse pieces of work. Feedback to the service provider is critical and may be needed daily. This is fundamentally important to tell the service provider about the effectiveness of the agreed actions in improving performance. It will be necessary to be clear if this is not happening, or only partially being effective, and agree what more needs to be done and within what timescales. Within the limits imposed by confidentiality, give feedback to those who initially raised the concerns. Make sure that IMCA and advocacy services are fully alerted to the possible need for their intervention, Where there are a substantial set of concerns in a very large-scale service with many or all adults at risk who receiving the service consider the need for a helpline or identified point of contact over and above the individual professional allocated. Agree and maintain arrangements to keep senior managers and Members informed and updated about the progress of the LSE and how risk is being managed and mitigated or continues. Ensure MAPS issues are fully communicated and recorded. Section 5. above refers. It is to be hoped that improvements identified will be made by the service provider and that, in time, there will be a defined end to the formal large scale S.42 enquiry. This would be agreed at a final ERM. This may be the end of the matter, or it may be agreed to maintain monitoring and ongoing support. In this context consider holding a forum to bring together staff from key agencies with the service provider to check that required longer term actions are undertaken. e.g. the appointment of a new manager and addressing his/ her ongoing learning and development needs. Any new concerns will be usefully considered in that forum as well, if appropriate. In these circumstances it will have to be decided if that forum is led by staff from the safeguarding service or from commissioning or quality monitoring teams. Staff who have known about the history of a service may be particularly sensitive if further concerns are identified and might raise these as safeguarding matters. This could be appropriate, but it is also possible that having established improvements and engendered more trust it is possible that the service can respond satisfactorily to
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