The former children’s minister and MP Edward Timpson will chair a new panel set up to examine child safeguarding practices.
The child safeguarding practice review panel has been set up by the Department for Education to commission national reviews of child safeguarding cases that they believe are complex or of national importance from June 29.
Drawing on experience from the police, children’s social, education and health sectors, the panel will be responsible for supervising the quality of national reviews and will look at what could be done differently to improve the protection and welfare of children.
Timpson, who will be paid £550 per day, initially for three days a week, will be joined on the panel by eight other members representing different professions, including Dr Susan Tranter, the executive headteacher of Edmonton County Schools and chief executive of Edmonton Academy Trust.
The millionaire ex-minister, who lost his Crewe and Nantwich seat to school funding campaigner Laura Smith at last year’s election, was appointed on March 20 and will serve for three years. He is expected to work three days a week during the initial set-up phase of the panel, and one or two days per week once it has been established.
“Nothing is more important than keeping children safe and the work of the new national panel will be pivotal in driving improvements in child safeguarding practice,” said the ex-MP, who already holds a series of other government appointments.
In April this year he was appointed chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), a non-departmental public body set up to promote the welfare of children and families involved in family court cases.
He is also an adviser to the children’s commissioner for England, an adviser to the Board of Trade, and leads the Department for Education’s review into school exclusions.
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