What is a safeguarding threshold document, and where is my area's?
Short answer
A threshold document, sometimes called the continuum of need, is the local safeguarding partnership's guide to when a concern about a child should go to early help or to children's social care. Every partnership publishes one; this guide says what it is for and where to find yours.
What the guidance says
Keeping Children Safe in Education is plain that “Referrals should follow the local referral process” (paragraph 65). It also expects the local safeguarding partners, the council, the police and the health service, to publish a threshold document setting out the criteria, including the level of need, for when a case should be referred to children's social care.
What it is for
A threshold document describes levels of need, usually from universal services through early help to child protection, with examples at each level, so that a school, a GP and a police officer judge the same concern the same way. It tells a designated safeguarding lead when a concern can be met by early help and when it should be referred to children's social care, and how. It is often called the continuum of need or a levels of need framework.
Where to find yours
On your local safeguarding partnership's website, usually under procedures or for professionals. Our list of partnerships links to each one, with the council's page for reporting a concern, checked every week. The partnership's own site is the current version; check it each year when the child protection policy is reviewed, and name it in the policy.
In Wales
Schools in Wales follow the Wales Safeguarding Procedures, which “are owned by the safeguarding boards in Wales” (Keeping learners safe, paragraph 1.16), and their regional safeguarding board's local arrangements. The list includes every regional board.
What the DSL should hold with it
The partnership's published arrangements and current priorities, the route to early help, the procedure for allegations against staff, and its latest learning reviews. A Safeguarding Context report names the partnership, links its site and the council's reporting page, and writes them into the policy paragraph. See a sample.
Quotations are from Department for Education and Welsh Government guidance, Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.