Local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) are the key statutory mechanism for agreeing how the relevant organisations in each local area will cooperate to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, and for ensuring the effectiveness of what they do.

The scope of the LSCB role falls into three categories:

• they engage in activities that safeguard all children and aim to identify and prevent maltreatment, or impairment of health or development, and to ensure that children are growing up in circumstances consistent with safe and effective care;
• they lead and coordinate proactive work that aims to target particular groups; and
• they lead and co-ordinate arrangements for responsive work to protect children who are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.

Cumbria Local Safeguarding Children Board has produced multi-agency Safeguarding Procedures in accordance with government guidance in ‘What to do if you are worried a child is being abused’ and the updated ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ which was published in March 2010.

The Board represents and coordinates the work of statutory sector agencies and partners in the voluntary sector to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in Cumbria.