Children Social Care measures - Establish multiagency child protection teams

A measure to create a duty for safeguarding partners (local authorities, police and health) to make arrangements to establish multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs) to support the local authority in the discharge of its child protection duties; and require relevant agencies to enter memorandums to set out how they will facilitate the operation of the MACPT. (Note: this is not new and used to be the norm in local authorities both pre and post the introduction of the Children Act 1989, with members of the Police Child Protection Team working with the social work Intake team, in the same office dealing with all new safeguarding referrals).

Ineffective multi-agency working is recognised as a key factor where child protection activity fails to keep children safe. Through this legislation, safeguarding partners will be under a collective duty to make arrangements to establish and run one or more multi-agency child protection teams for the local area. MACPTs will consist of a minimum core membership, set out in the primary legislation, to be nominated by the safeguarding partners. This will include a social worker, police officer, healthcare professional and person with education experience. These integrated teams of child protection experts will deliver specific child protection activities, which will be set out in regulations.

It is anticipated that the clearly defined duties will address inconsistencies and ambiguities in child protection practices and improved joint working will result in:

• Stronger approaches to information sharing and will improve consistency.
• Improvements for integrated working, shared identification of risk and proactive work around early intervention, prevention, and family help.
• Better join-up between children’s social care, police, and health services with education.
• Improved understanding of the roles of each agency in supporting children and families.
• Effective multi-agency practice.

Safeguarding partners (local authorities, police and health) will be under a collective duty to establish and run a MACPT. Safeguarding partners will be required to nominate representatives for the local area and relevant agencies must collaborate with the MACPT as required through safeguarding arrangements or specific memorandums.

However, the government plans to delay commencement of these provisions until 2027 and can include specific expectations in regulations on the support to be given by the MACPT to the local authority in the discharge of its child protection duties. The statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, will be updated to support these proposed legislative changes.

The above analysis relates to Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which has not yet become law and may be subject to change as it passes through Parliament. We will be posting updates to this page if there are any key developments but the above may not reflect the latest changes to the legislation.  Please contact our School Support (schoolsupport@wslaw.co.uk)  or Schools HR (schoolshr@wslaw.co.uk) teams if you require an update on the latest status of the Bill.