Northampton Safeguarding Children Board Case Study

About Northampton SCB

Working together to ensure all children and young people grow up in a safe environment is the guiding principle of the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Board (NSCB).

The NSCB consists of senior representatives from all the principal organisations in the county whose staff come into contact with children and young people, their parents and carers. Over 20 agencies are represented including schools, councils, the police and NHS healthcare trusts. NSCB’s Kevin Johnson is project officer for the Learning and Development, Policies and Procedures and Young People’s LSCB Sub Groups. In this role, Kevin oversees all aspects of work relating to these groups, including e-learning provision and face-to-face training.

The Challenge

Within the county, thousands of staff come into contact with children and young people every day, so the task of ensuring they received appropriate safeguarding training was daunting for Northampton SCB.

They were challenged by the need to train a large workforce on a limited budget in a wide range of subjects over a variety of formats.

Online learning can form a valuable part of a blended learning solution allowing practitioners to arrive for specific face-to-face training with a level of underpinning knowledge which is consistent across the group.

The Solution

As a result of searching the internet and researching what other Local Safeguarding Children Boards were using to deliver e-learning, NSCB found out about Virtual College.

Formed in 2006, Virtual College’s Safeguarding Children e-Academy specialises in the creation of online safeguarding learning resources working in partnership with over 60 local safeguarding boards. Following further investigation, the NSCB joined the Virtual College’s Safeguarding Children e-Academy in May 2014 purchasing 2,000 licences to allow staff to access the 6 ‘Awareness of Child Abuse and Neglect’ courses which are tailored to the different learning needs of staff within its agencies.

The NSCB also uses the self-registration functionality of Enable, Virtual College’s learning management system, which is branded to the look and feel of the NSCB.

This was very important to NSCB as they have a large number of people from many different areas undertaking the courses and spending significant amounts of time on administration would be counterproductive. Virtual College also provided support for any learner queries so they did not need to worry about resourcing this.

The Results

As a result of searching the internet and researching what other Local Safeguarding Children Boards were using to deliver e-learning, NSCB found out about Virtual College. Formed in 2006, Virtual College’s Safeguarding Children e-Academy specialises in the creation of online safeguarding learning resources working in partnership with over 60 local safeguarding boards.

Following further investigation, the NSCB joined the Virtual College’s Safeguarding Children e-Academy in May 2014 purchasing 2,000 licences to allow staff to access the 6 ‘Awareness of Child Abuse and Neglect’ courses which are tailored to the different learning needs of staff within its agencies. The NSCB also uses the self-registration functionality of Enable, Virtual College’s learning management system, which is branded to the look and feel of the NSCB.