North Yorkshire Children Protection

If you are worried about a child or a young person under the age of 19, you should ring our customer services centre on:

27.

This is available outside of office hours. The Minicom number is 0845 603 6391.

All calls are taken seriously and can be taken in confidence. In an emergency, always ring 999.

What happens when you call us

The customer services centre will take more details from you. Experienced staff will then decide whether action needs to be taken and, if so, how quickly. It may not always be possible to let you know what happened because of confidentiality. Combining your information and anything already known, a decision may be taken to conduct an investigation to establish whether the child is at risk of harm or not.

If you decide to remain anonymous this will be respected. However, it is helpful for the investigating social worker to be able to share your concerns openly, so we do ask callers to consider this option.

Following an investigation, staff from the children and young people's service will either:

• Decide no further action is required;
• Offer the family help or advice to resolve any difficulties; or
• Call a meeting to decide what further steps should be taken. This meeting is known as an initial child protection conference. It is held whenever there is good reason to be concerned that a child may have been abused, or is in some way at risk of being harmed.

North Yorkshire children's trust board

The North Yorkshire children's trust board has been set up under the requirements of the Children Act 2004 and represents all the agencies working with children and young people across the county. The trust unites all partners providing services for children and young people at both a strategic and local level. The partners are working together to improve outcomes for children and young people across North Yorkshire.