Back in 2018, we first set out the ingredients of effective multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, using what we had seen working well in our reviews and inspections.
Over time, through our inspections, we’ve learned more about what the most effective arrangements look like.
Our joint inspections with Care Quality Commission (CQC) and HMI Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) have given us a good insight into what partnerships do best in their response to children in need of help and protection. Some of the components needed for multi-agency practice to flourish include:
- a culture of continuous learning and development
- effective and ambitious, child-centred and family-focused, learning across partners
- good oversight of practice across partners
- wise and active engagement in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, with the right shared priorities
- a supportive and inclusive multi-agency system that offers professional challenge
- effective systems for information sharing that professionals are confident and knowledgeable about
- agencies understanding their respective roles and responsibilities
- effective collation and sharing of data, that gives all partners a good understanding of local risk and need
- consultation and engagement with children, families and communities, which helps improve practice
In this blog, we’ll go into more detail on some of the components of good practice. We hope this is useful for making improvements and learning.
The ‘front door’
We know that the first response to children and families, often known as ‘the front door’, is critical. It should set up the right pathway for the child to get the help they need and to be protected.
There is no one model of a front door. Local areas vary how they do it. Many describe it as a multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) but even these can vary significantly.
There is a lot to celebrate in the areas we’ve inspected so far, and these common components significantly help in getting the front door right.
The critical role of leadership in quality improvement
Local safeguarding children’s partnerships (LSCPs) play a critical role in quality assurance and scrutiny.
Strategic partners need to have oversight and a line of sight to practice within their own organisations, at the front door. Without this, it’s hard for partners to identify what needs to be done to improve, which means they may not take action where it’s needed.
In places where leadership arrangements are working well, the LSCP regularly scrutinises practice. This is often done through carrying out multi-agency audits alongside using quantitative and qualitative information.
In effective strategic partnerships, when the partners understand what is happening in practice and make improvements, this leads to better experiences for children and their families.
We have seen many good examples in our inspections. Here are a few:
Lewisham
[We saw] ‘good engagement by partners in LSCP multi-agency sub-groups that ensures that their work is aligned to shared partnership priorities and strategies. Together, the partners are focusing on improving how they analyse, evaluate and report on their impact on children’s experiences. Joint working is augmented by the objective challenge provided by the independent scrutineer’.
Walsall
‘Senior leaders ensure that there is a culture of continuous and shared learning across the partnership, which is successfully disseminated to staff. This helps to support identification of risk and needs for children, at the earliest opportunity, and promotes improvements in services for children and their families.’
Gloucestershire
‘The LSCP has appropriate oversight and knowledge of the effectiveness of multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. Their commitment to a continuous learning culture results in proactive intervention to improve services for children. A particular strength is the quality of the independent scrutiny arrangements which provide effective challenge and accountability to the LSCP.’
Being in school is a protective factor and provides a safety net for some children. We saw a good initiative in Blackburn and Darwen where leaders have set up network meetings for designated safeguarding leads in schools:
‘[These meetings are] used effectively to improve school leaders’ safeguarding practice and knowledge about services... Mental health practitioners based in schools identify children with emotional difficulties quickly and support them to access appropriate resources. Well-established and effective systems are in place for schools and within health services to receive Operation Encompass domestic abuse information. Police have extended Operation Encompass to include any concerns for children, when police consider that alerting schools enables additional safeguarding support for children.’
In Richmond, we also saw good leadership work:
‘[Managers] collate themes from referrals and regularly meet partners to discuss both threshold issues and quality of referral information. As a result, there has been a notable improvement in the number of referrals that are written directly to the child and that include the child’s voice.’
The risks when leadership is less effective
If leaders do not ensure that partner agencies engage with each other as an effective partnership, then:
- there is a lack of accountability for single agencies
- professional challenge is weak
- it becomes harder to identify ways to improve practice, and improvements are not acted on
Leaders are critical to setting the culture around:
- learning and development
- high challenge and high support
- strong management oversight
- child-centred practice
- professional curiosity
Leaders should ensure the quality of scrutiny and supervision across the partnership, particularly around health staff. Without this, it can lead to children not being consistently identified and responded to appropriately.
Evolving mental health practice
Across our different inspections, we have seen significant variability in the quality of child and adolescent mental health services (CAHMS) and mental health support for children. However, we have seen some positive examples.
Kingston Upon Thames, for example, has integrated CAMHS into its ‘single point of access’. This helps to ensure a proactive response to support children’s mental health.
Another good initiative we saw was a mental health ‘triage car’ in Buckinghamshire, which is:
‘... resourced jointly by Thames Valley Police and the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. This is particularly successful in preventing children having to spend time away from their families in times of crisis. A mental health professional, accompanied by a police officer, provides a telephone or mobile response and attends incidents to give advice and further assess the mental health of the child. They engage well with the children and access relevant NHS trust records, which assists in making informed decisions, and gives confidence to police officers around what action to take.’
Unfortunately, we know these examples showing positive work are not always the case nationally. CAMHS and mental health support are often areas that need improving across local areas.
Dealing with capacity issues
Having the capacity to respond in a timely and effective way to children at risk remains a challenge. The best areas monitor their capacity closely and, if they can, increase it when needed. As resources are stretched, this is not easy, and may be getting harder. This means that, despite some mitigation, there can be delays in responding to children.
We have seen particular problems, including:
- some children spending too long in police stations out of hours, without timely access to appropriate adults
- delays in early help and initial responses
- stretched out-of-hours services
- police forces without the capacity to ensure effective information-sharing
- contacts from the police that do not identify the concern, the required services, and whether they are making a referral
All of these can further add to stretched resources at the front door.
However, we have seen good practice where partnerships identified increasing demand on the front door and quickly allocated resources that made sure timely decision-making for children could continue.
Good information-sharing and communication
Information-sharing and communication are areas that need to improve. This has been the case for some time – it often comes up as a reflection in child safeguarding practice reviews and serious case reviews.
Where communication works well, it can make a significant difference to children’s lives. For example, in the Hampshire pilot, we saw that ‘professionals work collaboratively to share information, mitigating risk and ensuring that children receive the right level of help and protection.’
But some multi-agency meetings, such as strategy discussions, do not have the information they need to make the best decisions. And in some local areas, health information is not sought or provided at all.
Poor-quality referrals also affect capacity and timely decision-making. Partners do not consistently have a clear understanding of what information they need to make timely and effective decisions.
In many areas, local authority support for schools improves information-sharing and communication. This helps children and families access the right help, and helps schools know what services are available. For example, in one area, the education safeguarding team gives training on dealing with emotionally based school avoidance. They also give briefings about extra-familial harm.
However, too often, information systems do not consistently support the timely access and sharing of information.
Multi-agency training
Multi-agency training to support an effective front door is variable. Where this training is accessible to all, it can enhance identification of harm and professional curiosity.
We saw this in Rochdale:
‘Relevant targeted multi-agency training has enhanced practitioners’ knowledge and skilled interactions with children, young people and their families. There is a culture of learning and openness to challenge when there are concerns about children experiencing harm, which is devoid of blame’.
In conclusion
Our unique insight into partnership working across England confirms that those components we first set out 6 years ago remain relevant in dealing with today’s challenges. They are especially relevant as all areas begin to implement the reforms in line with Families First Partnership programme.
For further reading on the ‘front door’, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) has recently published a guiding principles document for local areas.
Finally, I would like to note that, through our inspections, we saw a huge number of people doing incredible work, often in very difficult circumstances. Thank you for everything you do.
We hope this blog has been helpful.