A new government consultation that wants to examine current guidelines designed to safeguard children has opened, and it wants to hear from children who have experienced the care system and their families.
The consultation, called “Working Together to Safeguard Children: changes to statutory guidance,” aims to get “the public’s views on planned changes to Working Together to Safeguard Children, which is the guidance used by people whose job it is to help children and keep them safe.”
The changes are listed on the consultation’s dedicated website pages:
Section 1: A shared endeavour
‘A shared endeavour’ is another way of saying ‘working together towards the same goal’. Sometimes, when children and their families need help, more than one person or service will be able to offer to help them.
Being a parent or carer can be hard, and it’s important that families can get the right help at the right time. Help could be offered in many different ways, such as by your school or your family’s doctor.
Parents and carers should be able to easily find out what help is available if they need it to make changes to better support their family. If a family needs help from different people and services, all those people should work together with the family to agree what help they need and who they get it from.
In Working Together, we’ve set out 4 ways people helping families should work with parents and carers when they need help. We’ve said that people working with parents and carers should:
- build positive and trusting relationships, and work with families to understand what they’re good at and what they need help with
- use language that everyone understands and that’s respectful
- make sure that parents and carers know what’s happening, have all the information they need to make good choices, and know where to get more information if they need it
- involve parents and carers in setting up the services that are there to help them
We also want everyone to be really clear about how to work together with families. Sometimes, if there are lots of people trying to help a child or their family, it can feel confusing.
In Working Together, we’ve said that everyone, wherever they work and whatever job they do, should make sure they do 5 things to work together. These are:
- have the same goals
- learn together and from each other
- make sure they have what they need to help families
- understand that families are all different and need different things
- ask each other questions when they do not agree
Section 2: Multi-agency safeguarding arrangements
‘Multi-agency’ means how all the people who work in different places (like those in schools, and doctors, nurses and social workers) need to work together to support children and protect them from harm.
Those whose job it is to make sure that all children in a community are safe and well are called safeguarding partners.
There are 3 types of safeguarding partners. They are:
- people who work in local authorities
- people who work in health
- the police
Safeguarding partners should work closely together to make the best decisions about how to keep children safe and to see that children get what they need.
In Working Together, we’ve said more about how safeguarding partners have to work with each other. We’ve:
- set out what people who work in local authorities, people who work in health and the police each have to do
- made clear what leaders need to do so they work in an open way, sort out any disagreements and learn from mistakes
- made the role of education stronger, because schools, colleges, early years providers and other education professionals play such an important role in children’s lives
Section 3: Help and support for children and their families
All children should live in a safe and loving home where the people looking after them understand what they need.
Most often, parents do a good job of keeping children safe. But sometimes, they have problems of their own that mean they find it hard to keep their children safe and healthy.
Help should be given to children who need it as soon as possible. This is called ‘Early Help’.
Sometimes, family members like grandparents, aunts, uncles or family friends can also help children and parents to make the situation better.
In Working Together, we want to be much clearer about the help and support that children should get. We have made clearer:
- how important all family members and close friends are in improving children’s lives
- how and when family members should be involved and supported
- how important those who work in childcare, schools and colleges are in keeping children safe
- that those who work directly with children in need of help do not always have to be a child and family social worker
- how those in children’s social care should support disabled children and their families
- that the most important thing is to get the best possible results for all children, including those who are disabled
Section 4: Decisive multi-agency child protection
‘Decisive’ means ‘very clear’.
We want all services to work together in the best possible way to protect children. Sometimes, children are hurt by people from inside their home. Sometimes, there are people outside their family who hurt them. We want everyone working with children to spot when a child is or might be being hurt by someone and to do something about it as quickly as possible.
In Working Together, we’ve written down what everyone working with children should look out for and what they should do if they’re worried that a child might be getting hurt. We’ve called these ‘child protection standards’– and they’re for everyone who works with children (which is what is meant here by ‘multi-agency’).
We’ve also made it much clearer what everyone who works with children should do if they’re worried that the harm is from outside of their home. Sometimes, children can feel unsafe in the places they go to, or they’re asked to do dangerous or harmful things. This might include when things are happening at school or in their local community, like at the local shops. We want to make sure that everyone – including teachers, the police, social workers and other adults who children might ask for help – know what to do and how to work together when this happens.
The authors of these website pages have also started to set out the questions in the survey so you can see them before you start the questionnaire, which Researching Reform has done for many years, and the writers get kudos points from us for doing so.
The questions are:
Question 1
What is the most important thing everyone working with families can do together to support parents, carers and children?
Question 2
There are lots of people who work with children to help them stay safe. Who is the most important person who works with children and why?
Question 3
If your friend told you they don’t feel safe, what is the most important thing that the adults who help them can do?
Question 4
Is there anything else you would like to tell us about the changes we want to make in Working Together?
Question 5
How old are you? Choose one of the following:
- 11 or younger
- 12 to 15
- 16 to 18
- 19 to 25
- prefer not to say
Question 6
Who are you? Choose one of the following:
- a child or young person with a social worker or family support worker
- a child or young person in care
- a care leaver
- none of the above
- prefer not to say
This is what the government says it will do next:
“We’ll read all the answers you give us and think about them carefully. We’ll also talk to groups of children and young people about what they think of our plans.
In the winter of 2023, we’ll publish a document showing what everyone told us.
We’ll then review the Working Together guidance every year to make sure it’s accurate and to see what extra changes we may need to make.
We’ll keep talking to children and young people as we make changes, to find out what they think. We want to make sure that every change makes a positive difference to children’s lives.”
The consultation closes on 6 September, 2023.
Useful links: