A drum-roll, a fanfare, plaudits, baubles; not the stuff we associate with children’s social care. We are involved in sensitive, painstaking and often painful work to safeguard children and to help them to thrive. Hard work and hard yards done by colleagues who rarely receive the credit they deserve for their care and unwavering commitment.

So, it was an unfamiliar experience to receive acclaim as recent winners of the MJ Award for Adult’s and Children’s Innovation for the work we have undertaken in Haringey with the Metropolitan Police to bring a safeguarding lens to the stop and search experience. I’ll admit to hugging my Lead Member, our Borough Commander and other colleagues in both relief and jubilation. This, for me, was recognition for everyone who toils away, every day, to keep our children safe and who never get the applause. This one was for all of you and all of us!

I am proud of the approach we have taken to stop and search, which recognises both its potentially traumatising impact and the opportunities these encounters provide to better safeguard children by joining up information about them. We have been working on this for five years and the fourth phase of the pilot is now being tested across London.

We are always learning lessons at each stage of the project and increasingly recognise the potential for a paradigm shift: seeing this engagement with representatives of one our safeguarding partners as an opportunity, that should not be wasted, to better protect children. For too long we have normalised what can be a traumatic experience, with unseen impacts for children; through our approach we are reassessing our responsibilities in light of our Child First principles. Professor Carlene Firmin will be drawing together an evaluation report into the Phase 4 of the project, which I am sure will be of interest to the wider ADCS membership. I hope this will, in turn, shape national practice in relation to the use of, and approach to, stop and search.

As we all embark on planning for local Families First for Children reforms, we have the opportunity to ask ourselves, where else should we be challenging practice which we see as potentially harmful or which doesn’t assist in our desire either to keep children safe, or to help families thrive? Our staff and partners do incredible work, and we have one of the soundest child protection systems in the world, we should take a moment to celebrate them and to ask ourselves how can we help them to do even better.