Setting

4 September 2026 Chris McLoughlin OBE, Director of Children’s Services, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council Professor Colin Scales, Acting Chief Executive, NHS Greater Manchester Philippa Johnson, Place Partnership Director, Stockport, NHS Greater Manchester Sir Stephen Watson QPM, Chief Constable, Greater Manchester Police Natalie Dalby, Detective Chief Superintendent and District Commander, Greater Manchester Police Kate Green, Deputy Mayor, Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner Nikki Pettitt, Independent Scrutineer

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Dear Stockport Local Safeguarding Partnership

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Joint targeted area inspection of Stockport

This letter summarises the findings of the joint targeted area inspection (JTAI) of the multi-agency identification and response to initial need and risk in Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.

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Joint targeted area inspection of Stockport

This inspection took place from 13 July to 17 July 2026. It was carried out by inspectors from Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS).

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Headline findings

Leaders have developed strong, mature partnerships, with services working closely together and most children and families benefiting from an effective integrated multi- agency response. Family help within family hubs has brought together multi-agency teams who work well across universal and targeted services. Leaders understand local strengths and areas for improvement and are committed to a learning culture.

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Headline findings

The partnership understands that there is more to do to secure a consistent response to initial need and risk for children in Stockport. Some staff misunderstand when to share information with partner agencies. They are insufficiently focused on children’s needs and overemphasise the wishes and engagement of parents. As a result, for a small number of children, opportunities are missed for agencies to share information at the earliest opportunity to help support families and prevent risks from escalating. Information concerning families’ ethnicity is mostly available from referrals. However, this information is not consistently explored during assessments in the depth needed to allow practitioners to fully understand families’ culture and heritage.

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Headline findings

The partnership is aware that more work is needed to ensure that all agencies are routinely informed and included in decisions about the next steps required to help and protect children and families. A partnership improvement plan is in place, based on an accurate self-assessment and informed by the findings of an external peer review. Leaders fully accept the findings of this inspection and have acted swiftly to strengthen support for children and families in the areas identified by inspectors for improvement.

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What needs to improve?

◼ T he quality and consistency of information-sharing across agencies, to ensure that there is no delay in information-sharing in order to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

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What needs to improve?

◼ The timeliness of visits to a small number of children so that risks are responded to swiftly and mitigated with effective safety planning in place.

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What needs to improve?

◼ Children’s consistent access to child protection and specialist sexual harm medicals when required, and the consistent recording of the rationale for decisions about child protection and sexual assault medicals taking place.

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What needs to improve?

◼ The strength of the multi-agency evaluation and response to children living in neglectful circumstances when risks are escalating, ensuring that sufficient weight is given to historical, recurring patterns of cumulative harm, rather than isolated incidents.

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Strengths

◼ A mature and embedded partnership that works together well. Partner agencies share a strong commitment to respond and plan for children’s needs effectively. They are embedding government reforms, including the Families First Partnership programme.

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Strengths

◼ An open learning culture that responds to external feedback and helps practitioners to develop expertise and knowledge through a strong multi-agency training offer, including training from the Centre of Expertise in Child Sexual Abuse.

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Strengths

◼ The co-location of agencies in the Multi-Agency Safeguarding and Support Hub (MASSH) facilitates cohesive partnership working and timely responses that meet children’s needs.

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Strengths

◼ Foster carers work well with other professionals, taking time to ensure that children settle in their care, so they do not spend time in police stations when police protective powers are in place.

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Strengths

◼ Commissioned services work cooperatively with agencies to ensure that effective plans are in place to understand and mitigate risks to children at the earliest opportunity. ◼ The partnership works well together in proactively using the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS) to protect children swiftly. Domestic Abuse Protection Orders are also proactively used, with information-sharing taking place at multi- agency risk assessment conferences, reducing risks to victims and children.

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Strengths

◼ The MASSH responds to children in their own right and ensures they have early access to therapeutic intervention to support their recovery from trauma.

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Strengths

◼ Operation Encompass, a scheme that ensures that school staff are informed when police respond to concerns about domestic abuse, benefits from the strategic oversight of the partnership, and agencies are working together to improve how it is used.

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Main findings

Stockport children’s services host a multi-agency safeguarding and support hub (MASSH). Dedicated health, police and social work personnel who are co-located in the MASSH provide information for risk assessments that helps professionals to understand and respond to children’s circumstances. Initial contact information provided by agencies is informed by a good understanding of the Stockport partnership’s threshold criteria. The recently updated contact process is reaping dividends, so that most children benefit from good-quality referral information that is provided to the MASSH at the right time and level. However, the partnership recognises there is more to do to ensure that historical information is consistently shared and to augment the focus on the child’s experience.

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Main findings

While agencies make appropriate and timely referrals to children’s social care, they do not consistently receive feedback about what has happened and about children’s progress. In most children’s cases, practitioners in the MASSH swiftly gather sufficient information to inform the manager’s decision-making and oversight about what needs to happen next. Police information is processed by the District Safeguarding Team in a timely way. In a small number of children’s cases, MASSH decisions do not ensure that the child’s needs are responded to at the first and earliest opportunity. For these children, gaps in recognising cumulative and escalating concerns mean that, together, agencies do not update risk assessments and mitigate risks to children quickly enough. Police systems do not consistently use markers on children’s records to help identify risks and vulnerabilities, which impedes risk assessment and information-sharing.

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Main findings

Practitioners seek to involve and sensitively engage parents at the earliest opportunity to discuss concerns when appropriate to do so, and this approach is well embedded.

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Main findings

While the child’s voice features in some agencies’ referral information, children’s experience of family life is not always given enough weight to inform next steps. When education partners refer into the MASSH, they articulate children’s voices very well. The health representative co-located in the MASSH can access most health systems and get relevant health data, although cover arrangements are inconsistent when this sole representative is not available.

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Main findings

Some professionals lack understanding about when to share information and about the need for parental ‘consent’. This means that, for some children, information- sharing does not consistently take place when it is necessary. For example, health visitors and education providers are not always informed when there are concerns about children they are in contact with.

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Main findings

Health visitors, midwives and early help staff in the family hubs provide a comprehensive range of practical interventions on site, in the community and in family homes. They communicate well, coordinate interventions and work in partnership to ensure services respond to the voice of children and to families’ identified needs. This strong, integrated approach, incorporating regular and timely team around the child meetings, enables children and families to access appropriate support at universal and targeted levels, including children who have a social worker. A nursery further enhances the parenting offer for families.

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Main findings

There is effective and consistent handover between day services and out-of-hours (OOH) social workers. Children’s care plans are available for the OOH team to follow up, helping OOH staff better respond to children’s emergency needs, for example by providing advice about children’s educational or health needs and aids to support communication. Police and social workers work quickly and effectively together, responding jointly to address children’s needs very well. Foster carers work well with other professionals, taking time to ensure that children settle in their care, so they do not spend time in police stations when police protection powers are in place.

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Main findings

The limited number of personnel who can access police national computer and police national database (PND) records means that information from these sources does not consistently inform understanding of risks and cumulative harm. Most strategy meetings are convened swiftly and provide an effective multi-agency forum for information-sharing to understand and mitigate risks to children. Incomplete information-sharing affects a small number of strategy meetings, weakening decisions about what needs to happen next for the children involved. Positively, police leaders acted swiftly during the inspection to create opportunities to improve access for district safeguarding teams to PND records, to facilitate better and more timely information-sharing. For a small number of children, child protection medicals or specialist sexual abuse medical advice are not consistently sought. Strategy meeting minutes are not consistently shared with partners, so that a single record of

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Main findings

When domestic abuse is a concern, children are rightly seen as victims in their own right. A strong and extensive offer supports children of all ages to understand their experiences and helps to heal their traumatic childhood domestic abuse experiences. A specialist domestic abuse hub (COMPASS) offers exceptional professional intervention that promptly alleviates trauma and provides an effective whole-family response to domestic abuse, including therapeutic support for children and adult victims and work programmes for adults who exhibit harmful behaviours. The COMPASS hub and the police work with other agencies to ensure that effective safety planning is in place, using Domestic Abuse Protection Orders, sharing information at multi-agency risk assessment conferences and galvanising support from Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVAs). However, hospital staff do not have access to specialist IDVA advice.

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Main findings

The partnership uses the DVDS, also known as Clare’s Law. Clare’s Law allows individuals to ask the police (right to ask) or to be proactively informed (right to know) about a partner’s history of abusive behaviour to help protect them and their children from domestic abuse. The police are proactive in identifying ‘right to know’ opportunities from their review of all domestic abuse referrals. They work effectively with partners and complete timely disclosures according to risk.

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Main findings

Most children are visited quickly by social workers, who seek children’s views and swiftly make plans to mitigate risks to children. Children’s needs are assessed through prompt multi-agency investigations. However, recommendations for strategy discussions to consider the need for Section 47 enquiries and child protection conferences are not consistently informed by enough consultation with other agencies. On occasion, children’s needs are not progressed with multi-agency conference discussion, but rather with social care leaders making single-agency decisions about what needs to happen. The rationale for these decisions is sometimes about working with the agreement of the family rather than considering the child’s experience of neglect and emotional harm. For this small number of children, insufficient weight is given to a history of non-cooperation and the withdrawal of parental agreement, and incident-based social work analysis does not

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Main findings

evaluate cumulative concerns. Also, police are not routinely sharing decisions not to continue a criminal investigation.

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Main findings

Social workers consider children and families’ need for specialist services at the earliest opportunity, drawing on a good range of helpful local community and voluntary services. A holistic approach to therapeutic help for all members of the family is well embedded, including accessible support from drug and alcohol services. Practitioners from individual agencies know families well. However, detailed information about diversity and cultural heritage is not consistently collated and reflected in assessment records. This is an area the partnership has prioritised, so that culturally sensitive practice can be embedded, and a better understanding of family functioning can inform the response to children’s cultural needs.

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Main findings

The complex safeguarding team comprises specialist police officers and other staff who work in an integrated multi-agency team, known as Aspire. Together, these professionals provide a well-coordinated multi-agency response to children who are experiencing criminal and sexual exploitation. Practitioners in the Aspire team have a strong understanding of child exploitation risks. They consider children’s peer relationships carefully, holding complex strategy meetings when there is more than one child at risk. Practice is based on a good understanding of children’s needs, the risks they face and strengths within their immediate and wider family networks. Practitioners help children and families to get the help they need, considering their background, identity and any barriers to accessing support. Children develop trusting relationships with experienced social workers and support staff who understand and

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Main findings

respond to complex abuse. The team is aware of the national referral mechanism and makes appropriate referrals. Professionals demonstrate appropriate curiosity and explore risk with children in a way that is both sensitive and transparent. This enables them to identify and respond to initial need and risk. The voice of the child is central to these relationships. A daily meeting, that includes school nursing and specialist local authority practitioners, considers exploitation risks when vulnerable children go missing from home and for children who have come to the notice of the police. While school nurses attend to consider the child’s health needs, they do not have capacity to provide direct follow-up support. The lack of an education representative also means that there is insufficient focus on the child’s development and educational attainment.

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Main findings

The implementation of the Philomena protocol, a scheme to ensure agencies share information when children go missing, is mostly helping the team find missing children more quickly. However, police do not systematically notify the local authority when children first go missing.

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Main findings

Detailed intelligence about children, for example from ‘stop and search’ incidents and about predatory adults, is supplemented with strong mapping arrangements that help professionals consider risks across local authority borders. Information-sharing with local authority licensing and community safety partners supports effective disruption activities that reduce risks to children and create safer community spaces.

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Main findings

There is no uniform method to help health professionals to identify child exploitation concerns. Leaders recognise this gap, and a uniform toolkit is being developed across Greater Manchester. Some vulnerable children do not receive the early response needed to mitigate harm before risks escalate. Although its work is generally effective, the Aspire team’s limited capacity means it can only work with those children already at high risk of harm outside the family. Education providers in Stockport work effectively with local partners to make sure that children get the support they need. Schools have effective systems to identify children who need help and protection. School staff make timely, good-quality referrals to early help services or to children’s social care, so that most children’s needs are responded to promptly and at the right level.

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Main findings

Delays may occur in a small number of children’s cases, when social care practitioners do not concur with schools’ assessment of increasing risk, when vulnerability is coupled with decreasing attendance or the child is potentially going missing from education. An important safeguard here is that strong relationships with education leaders provide good opportunities for escalation. When escalation takes place, children’s referrals are progressed and action is taken to mitigate harm and community risks.

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Main findings

Schools understand the impact of poverty on children, and they skilfully differentiate children’s experience of poverty from risks related to experience of living in a neglectful environment. Schools take steps to reduce the impact of poverty, providing practical help to families and financial support with vouchers and access to the food bank.

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Main findings

Schools are a key partner in the response to children’s experiences of domestic abuse. Operation Encompass is valued by school staff, who understand its purpose and work closely with police officers. Police strive to improve the quality and reliability of the Operation Encompass response. Schools note that the voice of the child does not always feature in the notification if they did not witness the incident directly. The designated police lead for Operation Encompass leads multi-agency meetings with representatives across Greater Manchester, including Stockport, to embed further good-quality responses to Operation Encompass.

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Main findings

The multi-agency safeguarding arrangements have cultivated a strong training offer, firmly embracing a culture of continuous learning and whole-system development. The training offer equips agencies with practice knowledge to better understand children’s needs and experiences across a wide range of issues. This includes growing understanding of the prevalence of child sexual abuse, the implications of neglect and the response to bruising in non-mobile babies. Safeguarding knowledge gained through mandatory safeguarding training is further strengthened by multi- agency learning circles, learning from child safeguarding practice reviews and the offer of child sexual abuse training from the Centre of Excellence.

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Main findings

Stockport’s multi-agency safeguarding arrangements are mature, well developed and ambitious for children and families. Agencies provide appropriate professional challenge. They have developed a good understanding of MASSH thresholds and respond effectively to meet children’s needs and respond to risk of harm at the right level of intervention. However, for a small number of children, decision-making can present as a barrier to information-sharing and to the acceptance of referrals when agencies have appropriately identified children’s needs. Agencies are aware of the escalation policy, and informal routes are used effectively to address most issues of professional disagreement. Leaders have oversight of formal escalations and use them to identify themes and trends in practice. This openness to learning assists the partnership in its desire to continuously and ambitiously deliver improvements to children’s circumstances.

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Main findings

The partnership undertakes thorough audits that help agencies to consider children and families’ needs and identify areas of learning and development. Audits are supplemented with performance management information that helps agencies, for example, to better understand and respond to risks for children who go missing and/or are being exploited or groomed into criminal gangs.

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Main findings

The independent scrutineer adds an effective layer of professional curiosity and insight that informs the partnership’s self-assessment and strengthens the response to areas for development. The partnership’s engagement in the relational systemic practice model helps agencies to reflect and consider their interventions with families, a key part of strengthening the child protection response. The partnership is taking steps to ensure that parental agreement and engagement do not override the focus on meeting children’s needs and the assessment of and response to risks. This includes agencies undertaking safeguarding supervision and strong oversight of referrals from CAMHS.

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Main findings

The partnership is planning the implementation of the government’s Families First Partnership reforms, to deliver earlier help to families and strengthen multi-agency working. Currently, the partnership offers early help services, and when children’s needs indicate, they are ‘stepped up’ to statutory services. The foundations are in place to allow for a more seamless continuum of family help, with alternatively qualified practitioners working alongside social workers to provide a consistent response to children’s needs. Independent expertise is offered by the multi-agency child protection team chairs, whose role has a positive impact on the quality of strategy meetings and decision-making for children.

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Next steps

We have determined that the chair of Stockport’s safeguarding partnership is the principal authority and should prepare a written statement of proposed action responding to the findings outlined in this letter. This should be a multi-agency response involving the individuals and agencies that this report is addressed to. The response should set out the actions for the partnership and, when appropriate, individual agencies. The local safeguarding partners should oversee implementation of the action plan through their local multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

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Next steps

The chair should send the written statement of action to ProtectionOfChildren@ofsted.gov.uk by 11 December 2026. This statement will inform the lines of enquiry at any future joint or single-agency activity by the inspectorates. Yours sincerely

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