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National Safeguarding Delivery Unit

Answer

The new cross-Government National Safeguarding Delivery Unit (NSDU) became operational on 1 July 2009. The NSDU is an operational unit of 27 staff, co-located in the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), drawn from the DCSF, the Ministry of Justice, Department of Health, and Home Office, as well as secondees from local authorities.The unit was established to drive forward the implementation of the Government's response to Lord Laming, giving strong, co-ordinated national leadership across the safeguarding system and to provide support and challenge to local authorities and their partners in driving up the quality of front-line practice. The unit will continue to work with a wide range of partners, including front-line practitioners and their managers, to develop further and take forward the priorities, all of which are designed to help improve safeguarding practice and outcomes for children and young people.The grades and associated pay scales of NSDU staff are set out in the following table.

Grade	Number of people in the NSDU at this scale	DCSF pay scales¹ (£)
SCS pay band 1A	1	67,600-128,900
SCS pay band 1	2	57,300-90,000
Grade 6	6	57,000-67,830
Grade 7	7	47,625-56,100
Senior executive officer	4	35,629-40,062
Higher executive officer	3	29,571-32,666
Executive officer	4	24,298-26,715
¹ Pay scales vary between Government Departments as a result of devolved pay bargaining arrangements

The work of the unit is overseen by a programme board of senior officials. The unit has submitted two progress reports to the DA(FCY) ministerial sub-group in July and December.The unit works closely with, and supports, the chief adviser on the Safety of Children who is due to submit the first of his annual reports to Parliament by April 2010.The NSDU's work programme will be published shortly and will include a summary of progress on the unit's work to date. It was decided to postpone the publication of this work programme in order to allow the new head of unit, who took up post on 7 December, to be consulted. The delay has not prevented the unit's work from being taken forward: significant progress has been made, as will be set out in the work programme that will be published.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

502 c1069-70W; 307263

Session

2009-10

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Subjects

National Safeguarding Delivery Unit

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk