Children's Services: Working together to improve services

This agenda challenges children’s services leaders and managers to build integrated teams that put the child and family at the heart of all that they do. Work with colleagues from other professional backgrounds to bring together a broad range of knowledge, skills, and working practices to develop successful integrated working.

Integrated working means everyone supporting children and young people works together effectively to put the child at the centre, meet their needs and improve their lives. These different services join forces with the aim of preventing problems for families from occurring in the first place. It is an effective way of supporting children and families with additional needs, and helping to secure real improvements in their life outcomes.

Strong and effective leadership is central to successful delivery of integrated services. The Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for the children’s workforce sets out the basic skills and knowledge needed by all people (including volunteers) whose work brings them into regular contact with children and young people helping individual practitioners deliver front line services.

In practical terms, this means that the organisations involved in meeting the needs of children, young people and their families (local authority, health services, schools, police, voluntary groups etc) in Luton have teamed up in new ways, to protect children and young people from harm and help them achieve what they want in life.

Meeting the needs of children, young people and their families in Luton


Multi Agency Family Support Panels

Multi-agency Family Support Panels operate in each of Luton’s five neighbourhood areas and meet every two weeks. Their objective is to help achieve better outcomes for children and young people by providing a mechanism to co-ordinate family support resources on a neighbourhood basis.

The panel provides professionals working with families – especially those in the universal health, education, community services and the voluntary sector - with better access to expertise and targeted family support resources. Luton’s front line family support services are already very accessible to children and families because they are largely based in and around schools. The presence of a panel should not lead to the identification of new unmet needs on a large scale. However, children’s needs should be met in the best-coordinated way. Successful panels prevent children and families “ricocheting” from one service to another.

Luton Multi Agency Family Support Panel: Policy document & procedures


Lead Professional and Team Around the Child

The lead professional is a key element of integrated support. It is an important role that enables an individual to take the lead to co-ordinate provision and act as a single point of contact for a child and their family when a range of services are involved and an integrated response is required. This means all children and young people who require integrated support from more than one practitioner, will only have to tell their story once. The lead professional is responsible for leading and facilitating regular Team Around the Child (TAC) meetings where together with parents/carers, young people and practitioners in the TAC information is shared, action plans refined, progress is monitored and reviewed.  Practitioners in the TAC remain responsible for delivering their part of the plan and sharing minute taking etc.

The Team Around the Child and the Lead Professional guide for practitioners
The Team Around the Child and the Lead Professional guide for managers

Information Sharing

Sharing information is essential to enable early intervention for people who need additional services to achieve positive outcomes. It is vital for providing effective and efficient services that are coordinated around the needs of an individual or family and for safeguarding and protecting the welfare of individuals.

It is important that practitioners understand why, when and how they should share information so that they can do so confidently and appropriately as part of their day-to-day practice.

The local information sharing protocol can be downloaded from the Luton Safeguarding Children Board - click on 'local procedures and protocols'. 

Information Sharing: Guidance for practitioners and managers

Common Assessment Framework

The CAF is a key part of delivering services that are integrated and focused around the needs of children and young people. CAF assessment facilitates the process by which different agencies and organisations offering support to children, young people and their families can `join up’ to create a Team Around the Child that works together with parents/carers and young people in a co-ordinated and timely way. All practitioners in the children’s workforce should be able to undertake a CAF assessment. The CAF form is a standardised tool and provides an assessment that is common and can (with permission) be shared across services. CAF may be used to provide background information to practitioners undertaking more specialist assessments (eg. health, education). 

Because the CAF process works so closely with families, in Luton, CAF is the preferred first step in assessing needs, and offering support (unless significant harm is indicated). For early intervention and prevention to be successful, practitioners should be offering a CAF assessment at the start of support being offered and where there is some concern that a child or young person may not be achieving one or more of the Every Child Matters outcomes.

Concerns regarding a child flowchart
CAF Pre-assessment checklist
CAF Form
Notification of completed CAF, appointment or change of Lead Professional
CAF Guidance: Managers guide
CAF Guidance: Practitioners guide
CAF leaflet: for parents/carers
CAF leaflet: for young people 
Child protection referral form

Safeguarding

A key objective for the LSCB is to promote the message that ‘Safeguarding Children is everybody’s responsibility’ and therefore this site is aimed at, not only professionals but children, young people and their families. www.lutonlscb.org