Agenda item

Operation Encompass:

Presentation – Police, Crime and Victims’ Commissioner.

Minutes:

The Panel received a presentation from the PCVC on Operation Encompass, a project which aimed to safeguard and support children and young people who were involved in or affected by incidents involving domestic abuse (for copy of slides see file of Minutes).

 

The project was a collaborative initiative which involved Durham Constabulary, Darlington Borough Council, Durham County Council and schools and academies.

 

Operation Encompass provided a method of sharing information between the police, local councils and schools.  It enabled a designated Key Adult within the school or academy to be provided with information, explaining that a child was present in a household at the time that an incident of domestic abuse was recorded as having taken place.

 

The aim of Operation Encompass was to provide immediate support to a child whilst in attendance at school following an incident in the home and it was designed to reinforce safeguarding and ensure that a child's wellbeing was of paramount importance.  Operation Encompass improved multi-agency sharing of information and built upon the trust that already existed between them.

 

In County Durham 130 schools had opted into the Operation Encompass process and this number was rising.  All schools in Darlington had signed up to be part of the scheme and all Darlington schools had either attended the launch event for Operation Encompass or had received 1-1 awareness training from the Education Safeguarding Officer.

 

Councillor Allen thanked the PCVC for his presentation and urged Panel Members to attend the open session training for teachers of they could to see the value of the programme.

 

Councillor Brookes informed the Panel that domestic violence/abuse was more prevalent than thought.  He asked what the next steps would be following the sharing of information and knowledge and added that this could be a massive resource issue.

 

The PCVC replied that safeguarding issues placed a massive pressure on policing and that any new funding formula must include an element of non-crime demand.  Encompass was to provide support to children and young people and the police would investigate and take action separately to this.  The use of body-worn cameras by officers had resulted in the highest level of successful prosecutions for domestic violence incidents.

 

In response to a question from Councillor Jones regarding the Domestic Abuse Scrutiny Panel the PCVC reported that 11 volunteers had come forward to serve on the Panel.

 

Mr Dodwell informed the Panel that he was very pleased with the work of Operation Encompass which was another example of the Durham force being proactive.

 

Councillor Harker informed the Panel that he had attended a school governors meeting where the head teacher had reported the school had signed up to Operation Encompass and spoke highly of it.

 

The Panel thanked the PCVC for his presentation.