Within the ICB Update for Primary Care dated 6 November 2023 (link), the ICB informed General Practices of the payment criteria for the provision of the Safeguarding reports and services.

The details were as follows:

As per NHSE guidance, payment must only be claimed for the following 4 types of report:

1. Initial Child Protection Conference Report
2. Review Child Protection Conference Report
3. Multi Agency Risk Assessment conference (MARAC) Report
4. Section 42 Adult Safeguarding enquiry

There will be a payment for completion of a ‘simple report’. This is a report that takes approximately 30 minutes of work to complete. It is anticipated that the majority of safeguarding reports will fall into this category. Examples of this are reports for MARAC and review child protection reports and safeguarding adult enquiries (section 42 enquiry).

There will be a payment for completion of a ‘complex report’. This is a report that has taken 60 minutes or more to complete. As an example, an Initial Child Protection Conference Report may take more time to complete as more information is required at this stage (in comparison to a review child protection conference report where an update since the last meeting is required). Alternatively, you may need to complete a report for a particularly large family that takes 60 mins to complete, for example a MARAC report for a family of 6 may fall into this category.

Payment for travel will be made where attendance at a case conference is required and this will be paid as a sessional rate. It is expected that the majority of attendances at case conferences will be by remote links (i.e. Skype, Teams) and therefore claims for travel will be exceptional.

It is important to note that the claim and payment made is for a single report which contains information for ALL members of the family - ONE FAMILY = ONE REPORT

Following on from the Lincolnshire LMC committee meeting in February 2024, the LMC agreed to liaise with the ICB Contracts team as the committee feel that the time spent on a report (regardless of being in a family) should be treated as one payment.

We will confirm to Practices when we have further clarification.  We encourage Practices to only claim as per the above guidance for the time-being, but retain any evidence where a claim has been submitted for a single payment when the report was for a family.

When submitting your claim, Practices may wish to include a statement similar to the following:

"We understand that there are ongoing discussions between Lincolnshire LMC and Lincolnshire ICB as to the charges for multiple reports within one family and that multiple family members on one report is a data governance issue. As such, our Practice reserves the right to submit subsequent claims where a single report has been claimed containing information on multiple family members."