Working Together Update

Working Together Update December 2020

The Department for Education published a new edition of the statutory guidance “Working together to safeguard children: a guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children” (Department for Education, 2018).  This guidance sets out what all organisation must do to safeguard children and young people under the age of 18.

Updated topics include:

• Additional guidance for information sharing, homelessness, domestic abuse and child mental health
• Assessing need and providing help
• Organisational responsibilities
• Multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
• Local and national child safeguarding practice reviews, and
• Child Death Reviews

A list of the amendments is as follows:

• Additions to include reference to children being vulnerable from domestic abuse, including controlling or coercive behaviour (page 9) and the impact this has on children (page 14)
• The need for practitioners to be alert to early help when a parent/carer is in custody (page 14)
• For schools to be aware of mental health problems and the presenting behaviours that may indicate a concern (page 14-15)
• Giving consideration to a social care referral where a child/young person is admitted to a mental health facility (page 18) and where for these young people local protocols for assessment require particular care (page 27)
• The Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR – the legal bases to support and consider when sharing information (page 19-21)
• Homelessness Duty:  overview on what public authorities have a duty to refer, what key information is required to support the referral and the importance of earlier intervention (page 23)
• The change of reference from Contextual Safeguarding to ‘Assessment of risk outside the home’ (page 25)
• People in positions of trust: defines an additional point where an allegation may be relevant where a person has behaved or may have behaved in a way that indicates they may not be suitable to work with children (page 60)
• Domestic abuse: reference to harm being indirect and non-physical in cases of controlling/coercive behaviour and economic abuse  (page 65)
• The requirement for Local authorities to notify the Ministry of Defence of any service children subject of a CP plan and whose family are about to move overseas (page 72)
• The link to the Child Safeguarding online Notification form for Local Authorities to notify incidents to the Panel is detailed (on page 86)
• How to notify a serious incident, rapid review and local child safeguarding practice review (page 96)
• Updates to the Glossary in Appendix A including reference to: the definition of Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, the definition of abuse to include harm experienced by the impact of domestic abuse (page 106) and the definition of domestic abuse (page 110-111)
• Additions to further sources of information in Appendix B relating to homelessness (page 112 and 114), Child Exploitation Disruption Toolkit , Commissioning framework for CSA, the Draft Domestic Abuse Statutory Guidance Framework (page 113) and GDPR Guide (page 115)

For more information please visit:

To see an updated version of working together with amendments highlighted please click on the link below:

Working Together Update Dec 2020