Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023

This is a new chapter that brings together new and existing guidance to emphasise that successful outcomes for children depend upon strong multi-agency partnership working.

The principles as set out on the Children’s Social Care National Framework also apply in Working Together:
* children’s welfare is paramount
* children’s wishes and feelings are sought, heard, and responded to
* children’s social care works in partnership with whole families
* children are raised by their families, with their family networks or in family environments wherever possible
* local authorities work with other agencies to effectively identify and meet the needs of children, young people, and families
* local authorities consider the economic and social circumstances impacting children, young people, and families

The chapter also covers expectations for multi-agency working at all levels (strategic leaders, senior and middle managers and direct practice). These expectations ensure that practitioners:

Share the same goals,
Learn with and from each other,
Have what they need to help families,
Acknowledge and appreciate difference,
Challenge each other.
 
The updated guidance sets out four principles that professionals should follow when working with parents and carers:
 
Effective partnership and the importance of building strong, positive, trusting and co-operative relationships,
Respectful, non-blaming, clear and inclusive verbal and non-verbal communication that is adapted to the needs of parents and carers,
Empowering parents and carers to participate in decision making by equipping them with information, keeping them updated and directing them to further resources,
Involving parents and carers in the design of processes and services that affect them.

The second chapter strengthens how the multi- agency safeguarding arrangements (local authorities, integrated care boards and the police) work to safeguard and protect children locally, including with relevant agencies.
Changes:
The changes include clarifying the roles and responsibilities of safeguarding partners, emphasising the role of education in safeguarding arrangements. The chapter also considers the importance of voluntary, charity and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations within safeguarding arrangements.

The revision of this chapter focuses on how organisations can provide help, safeguarding and protection for children and their families. It is split into three sections:

Early Help: strengthens the role of education and childcare settings in supporting children and keeping them safe. The approach to working with families has also been strengthened, outlining the role of family networks and the use of family group conferencing.
 
Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children clarifies that a broader range of practitioners can be the lead practitioner for children and families receiving support and states that partners need to agree local governance arrangements in relation to this.  It also clarifies the role of children’s social care in supporting disabled children and their families, children at risk of, or experiencing, harm outside the home, children in mother and baby units (in prisons) and children at risk from people in prison and people supervised by the probation service.

Child Protection introduces new national multi-agency child protection standards to set out actions, considerations and behaviours for improved child protection practice and outcomes for children. It clarifies the multi-agency response to all forms of abuse and exploitation from outside the home, consideration of children at risk of experiencing extra-familial harm in all children’s social care assessments and includes resources to support practitioners understanding of the response to online harm.

In line with Section 11 of the Children Act 2004, a range of individual organisations and agencies working with children and families have specific statutory duties to promote the welfare of children and ensure they are protected from harm. These duties, as applied to individual organisations and agencies, are set out in this chapter.
Changes:
Updates to this chapter include Changes to the Prison and Probation sections highlights the mutual benefits of exchanging information with children’s social care which strengthen and clarify processes and responsibilities for child safeguarding.

When a child sadly suffers a serious injury or death as a result of abuse or neglect, understanding not only what happened but also why it may have happened can help improve safeguarding responses in the future at both a local and national level. Child Safeguarding case reviews are used to identify this learning to seek to prevent or reduce the risk of recurrence or similar incidents.
Changes:
Changes to the chapter include keeping in touch with care leavers over the age of 21 and the reporting of the death of care leavers up to the age of 25 to improve learning and outcomes for this group of young people.

The death of a child is a devastating loss that profoundly affects all those involved. The process of systematically reviewing the deaths of children is grounded in respect for the rights of both children and their families, with the intention of learning what happened and why, and preventing future child deaths. This is managed through the Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP).
Changes
Factual changes have been made to the chapter as highlighted in the DofE Summary of Changes document.