Strong relationships are the best safeguarding tools we have
By Eavan McKay
Eavan McKay is Policy and Public Affairs Manager at NSPCC. Drawing on recent NSPCC research, in response to our Map of the Children’s Workforce, Eavan highlights how Family Hubs can lead the way on a multi-agency safeguarding approach, and what best practice joined-up working might look like.
Looking across the Map of the Children’s Workforce, we can see where parts of the system connect: where a child’s family life connects to their health, where their health connects to their education, and so on.
Children and families don’t get a map of the systems and services they are navigating. They just experience the professional in front of them, and those relationships and interactions might impact how they view all professionals offering support.
At the NSPCC we are firm in stating safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility – from professionals who work directly with children and families, to neighbours and friends. But some professionals can play a particular role in spotting signs or concerns – for example Health Visitors are one of the only professionals that should see every baby in their home environment.
And whilst so many professionals play an amazing role supporting children and families, and keeping them safe, in our work in safeguarding and child protection, we know that link points in the system between agencies and services can become points of failure for support around a child.
We know that link points in the system between agencies and services can become points of failure for support around a child.
Time and time again, serious case reviews highlight the perennial problem of poor multi-agency working: problems in ‘information sharing’ between services and agencies, lack of follow up, or distrust between professionals.
Yet these points of connection between agencies also hold great potential for responsiveness and prevention – for picking up concerns before they become crises.
So what are some qualities and principles that enable more joined-up working around a child?
Family Hubs are an example of where these points of multi-agency connection can enable collaborative working more seamlessly around children and families.
Our recent report It Takes a Place: Multi-Agency Safeguarding in Family Hubs assessed multi-agency working in Family Hubs and highlighted the significant potential of Family Hubs to strengthen safeguarding through early intervention, relational practice, and integrated service delivery.
While provision varies across locality, we think that, at their best, Family Hubs often model practices that lead the way for more connected working with the child at the centre.
1. Shared training
If safeguarding is everyone’s job, it would follow that everyone would be trained with uniform clear standards on safeguarding, but this is not the case.
That’s why one of our policy recommendations in It Takes a Place includes the need for shared safeguarding training across professionals and agencies. This would help to foster a common understanding and strengthen professional competence.
It is vital that this training is context-specific and provides enough depth, as generic training can reduce practitioner confidence. But professionals in different roles learning together can also build role-empathy and enrich the nuance and applicability of safeguarding guidelines.
Professionals in different roles learning together can also build role-empathy and enrich nuance.
In Family Hubs, shared training across agencies has helped practitioners understand each other’s roles and perspectives, strengthening relationships, trust and rapport. Our research showed that in Hubs where multi-agency training was in person, this was most effective at building strong, joined up safeguarding cultures.
2. Shared language and frameworks
Our research showed that language about risk sometimes differs across agencies, different services use different frameworks to assess risk, and there can be confusion about consent and privacy procedures around sharing sensitive information while escalating a concern.
When a professional is weighing up the need to make a safeguarding report, these barriers add additional noise and anxiety to the process and can sometimes obscure professionals’ sense of responsibility to share relevant safeguarding information.
Shared language and frameworks across different agencies would ensure that practitioners are not operating with a different definition of risk, reducing friction in an already complex and sensitive process.
3. Clear accountability principles that reach beyond role boundaries
As our research highlights, many practitioners feel that siloed protocols and rigid role boundaries create gaps in safeguarding responses.
Often, when a safeguarding concern is raised and escalated, practitioners are left with uncertainty about who is responsible for progressing concerns once they cross service lines. This creates accountability vacuums, with some feeling that systems of escalation create, at their worst, a kind of ‘report and forget’ culture.
We see greater confidence and consistency in practice among practitioners where clear governance arrangements exist: safeguarding leads, defined escalation routes, and cross-agency joint supervision
Clarity of roles and accountability is a key determinant of safeguarding effectiveness. We see greater confidence and consistency in practice among practitioners where clear governance arrangements exist. This includes named safeguarding leads, defined escalation routes, and cross-agency joint supervision.
4. Co-location is important, but integration is vital
A service can only successfully support the children and families it sees. A fundamental barrier to many of our non-statory services in the UK is access and awareness.
Our research found that less than half of parents feel confident accessing support services available to them.
This lack of clarity about who does what, and where to go for support, reinforces the need for a clearer and more consistent ‘front door’ into local services, which Family Hubs are shown to provide.
As well as helping families find support in a single place, Family Hubs also offer a point of connection for professionals. Multi-agency services like these can then organise themselves beyond a single service remit, and instead around the families that walk through the door, and the recognisable needs of a local community.
To do this well services can’t just be co-located together, they must be integrated.
We saw through our research that Family Hubs that had strong multi-agency working were proactive in bringing together professionals in regular formalised triage sessions, rather than relying on individual professionals seeking one another out.
5. Relational practice and trusting relationships
Our research showed that safeguarding failures in early years settings do not primarily stem from weak individual practice, but from a system built around crisis-driven statutory thresholds rather than the preventative, relational and continuous nature of work needed with babies, infants and families.
Safeguarding failures in early years settings do not primarily stem from weak individual practice, but from a system built around crisis-driven statutory thresholds.
In child safeguarding, we understand risk to a child as something that is fluid and not always linear. Risk can appear at a low level then can escalate quickly, putting a child in danger.
The relationship between a practitioner and a family, or between multiple practitioners, that can hold the bigger picture, or spot a pattern forming early, is crucial for safeguarding children. It’s the niggle that says ‘I’m worried about…’ or the conversation that asks ‘Have you also noticed…’ that can lead to help being offered early, before families reach overload or risk escalates.
Family Hubs can be places that build trust between professionals and with families to enable early identification of concerns and encourage families to seek and accept support.
The relationship between a practitioner and a family, or between multiple practitioners, that can hold the bigger picture, or spot a pattern forming early, is crucial for safeguarding children.
The children’s workforce is full of professionals working extraordinarily hard for babies, children and their families, often in incredibly stretched and challenging settings.
Working in a joined-up way is always going to be difficult, but Family Hubs give examples how this can be done more effectively.
Because, for children, strong relationships between professionals and families, and between professionals across agencies, are the best safeguarding tools that we have.