Do you think there is a disconnect between senior management and frontline practitioners?
- Yes (92%, 747 Votes)
- No (8%, 68 Votes)
Total Voters: 815
Loading ...Councils and partner agencies are to be required to establish multi-agency child protection teams, under legislation to overhaul children’s social care.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would also allow for the regulation of agency work in children’s social care and the creation of a new type of placement in which a child could be deprived of liberty.
Other planned reforms include requiring authorities to offer families a family group decision making meeting before making a care or supervision order application, to enable the network around the child to discuss and make proposals regarding their welfare.
Multi-agency child protection teams
The creation of multi-agency child protection teams was a recommendation from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2022 report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.
That review found a “systemic flaw in the quality of multi-agency working”, with “an overreliance on single agency processes with superficial joint working and joint decision making”.
On the back of this report, and that of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, the previous government selected 10 areas to test the value of multi-agency child protection teams, alongside other measures, under the families first for children pathfinder. The measure in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will be part of a national rollout of the pathfinder.
Under the bill, councils, chief officers of police and relevant NHS integrated care boards (ICB) must set up one or more multi-agency child protection teams for the relevant local authority area.
The teams’ composition and role
Each team would consist of at least one social worker and educational professional, put forward by the relevant director of children’s services, a health professional nominated by the relevant ICB and a police officer chosen by the chief of police.
The government will specify requirements for these roles, for example in relation to qualifications and experience, in regulations under the legislation. This is likely to include requirements for lead child protection practitioners, the specialist social workers who form part of the multi-agency teams being tested through the pathfinder.
The legislation states that the teams’ role would include supporting councils in carrying out their duty to investigate child protection concerns, under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, along with other duties prescribed in regulations.
However, based on the pathfinder, it is likely that the role of the multi-agency teams will be to carry out section 47 investigations and other core child protection functions.
What else is in the bill?
Other measures in the bill include:
- Enabling the government to regulate councils’ use of agency workers in children’s social care, which would cover both social worker and non-social worker roles. This would be based on rules brought into force in October 2024, which only cover social workers.
- Mandating councils to offer a ‘family group decision making’ meeting when they are seriously considering applying for a care or supervision order, to give families an opportunity to come together and make a proposal in response to concerns regarding the child’s welfare.
- Providing a statutory framework to authorise a deprivation of liberty for children who need it to keep them safe, in accommodation other than a secure children’s home, designed with the primary purpose of care and treatment.
- Enabling the government to require councils to join together regionally to carry out their functions for accommodating looked-after children. Such regional care co-operatives are currently being tested in two areas.
- Empowering Ofsted to subject parent companies to an improvement plan if any of their subsidiaries are suspected of failing to meet the required standards in two or more regulated services that they run, such as children’s homes.
- Enabling Ofsted to impose fines on companies for breaches of care standards, including for running unregistered children’s homes.
- Setting up a financial oversight regime, run by the DfE, for the largest and most significant providers of children’s social care services, which would require them to provide information to the DfE on their finances, including in relation to their sustainability.
- Giving the government the power, through regulations, to cap the profits of non-local authority providers of children’s homes or fostering agencies.
- Requiring local authorities to publish a local offer setting out their support for kinship families.
- Requiring councils to provide to eligible care leavers up to the age of 25 with support with finding and maintaining accommodation and accessing services where their welfare requires it
- Automatically including education and childcare agencies in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.
- Making provision for the specification of a single unique identifier for each child, to aid information sharing between agencies.
- Extending the role of virtual school heads to promoting the educational achievement of children in need and children in kinship care on a statutory basis.
- Requiring councils to have and maintain children not in school registers and provide support to home-educating parents.
- Empowering local authorities to require that children subject to child protection processes attend school when school is in their best interests.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 
Hampshire County Council 
Oxfordshire County Council 
South Gloucestershire Council 
Wokingham Borough Council 
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I’m go smacked ,I was in social work for 33 years and have heard this proposal before ,it’s not a new initiative at all,it might have govt law to support it now (hopefully) but multi agency teams are not very functional unless you change all systems and the ethos of every individual in any joint work system..Or it means individuals just go into any joint arrangements with their own agency s hat on and can’t effectively work together,even IT systems don’t speak to each etc etc,same old issues .where has the social worker as a tool in their work gone ??? The government has eroded the social worker role over the years to the point people don’t want to even see it as a chosen career path anymore !!!
So further focus on professionals who most likely have never met the child. Very little focus on the child.
I predict many more child deaths and SCR pointing the finger at each agency a out why information wasn’t shared or known.
Building a trusting and supportive relationship with the child and really hearing their voice seeing their life not gossiping and speculating in offices may be a better way forward.
They are living their life 24/7 GPs may only see them once a year or not at all with phone consultations. Health staff working with families in mental health substance misuse may never see the children and parents monthly or 4 times a year. Even health visitors see little of children now police may have information if they are involved but in most cases know nothing or anyone in the household and my experience of education is they too often parent blame for the schools failings to support the child and have significant issues with candour where harm occurs in their care.
The child needs to be brought to the forefront only they really know what life is like for them time needs to be spent building a relationship developing services and resources to gain their trust and provide safety
A club once a week they can attend get to know staff have a warm meal go out on trips access free clothing toiletries toothbrushes you will soon see who is hungry or desperately needs these things.
Strop rolling out more of the same it’s not working!!!
There needs to be better understanding of what home education looks like when it’s done well it’s not simply children at home isolated learning on line. It’s a mixture of social clubs sports clubs learning through first schools or local museums and library’s and art galleries visits and organised home education events. It’s spending lots of time outdoors with peers and following the child’s interests. These children are far from invisible or isolated. A home educated child who does not access anything outside the home (unless it is due to mental health) and parents have no goals to increase this or where there is no external interaction through gaming for example or contact by vidio call with friends as a process of building confidence are more concerning than those who may struggle to demonstrate structure learning online or written form but show a wide variety of learning through play or with peers.
The home ed community are not abusers nor should they be completed to the carers responsible for the murder of Sara Sharif treated with suspicion or contempt. It takes considerable time effort and commitment to home educate and juggle life but can be so positive for those children repeatedly failed by education where there is no change on the horizon. The system is broken to fix it ….yet another review with no solution more threats and intimidation with fines or criticism by services but never any help or services needs not met in school but parents blamed distress in the child due to being forced into school where they are constantly overwhelmed but then parents accused of causing the distress. Exclusions long term absence caused by this interrupt any learning that was happening the child falls more behind lies friendships and self esteem and becomes more distressed creating more parental blame education does nothing to support the child reflecting attention to funding behaviour parental neglect or worse fii. Add to that bullying or being the victim of harmful sexual behaviour and schools feel like living in hell. For all involved home education often provides a light at the end of an extremely dark tunnel and there should not be an attitude that school is best unless education truly pulls it’s socks up doesn’t delay action and addresses the horrific numbers of children raped and sexually abused in school with no protection from criminal justice social care or education.
Put the child firmly in the center stop focussing on professionals they have a role for sure but this isn’t working
I find Wendy Smith’s arguments really compelling.The focus on professionals has become completely skewed and valuable time is being spent by social workers talking to people who are really often very transient visitors in families lives.
Where I part company with Wendy is that I think it is vital that parents and other key family members are also engaged fully as well as children. Our research on domestic abuse highlights the urgency of having proper conversations with all impacted and having the time to fully understand what is going on.
The focus on professionals and multi-agency working has become a kind of magical thinking on the part of policy makers and seems extremely unlikely to get us anywhere. There is no substitute for the hard graft of spending time with children, families and communities and seeking to understand their challenges and strengths.