National multi-agency practice framework for children’s services

Multi-agency engagement refers to practitioners, organisations, agencies and stakeholders working together alongside families to meet the diverse needs of babies, children and young people (hereafter grouped together under the term children).

Effective multi-agency engagement leads to better outcomes for children and families through a co-productive problem-solving approach. 

The main agencies, but not exclusively, include: 

• local authorities (for example, children’s services, housing, education, communities)
• health (primary and secondary)
• police
• youth justice
• the third sector

This framework is primarily developed for children’s services but can be adapted for use in any organisation working with children.

Partnership working has developed extensively in Wales over the last decade with agencies pooling expertise, support, and funding to navigate children through situations which can seem insurmountable. When this works well children, families and professionals all see benefits but when it fails it adds to risk, delays and missed opportunities for children, young people and families; and increases frustration and workloads for professionals. Every part of the system needs to adopt a collaborative problem-solving approach, which is strength based, and the aim of this framework is to drive forward progress and success with good practice. 

Practitioners work on a multi-agency basis in different ways, for instance:

• practitioners coming together to support a child to access the support they need from more than one agency, such as a child with complex needs
• a shared approach and process for working together on a common range of issues such as domestic violence, child exploitation and child protection
• a multi-agency team where professionals from different agencies work together as a service, such as a therapeutic team

Each of the approaches set out above will need a different model to manage their way of working together; the framework aims to set out some common components which can be adapted according to the depth of multi-agency practice. Every authority is likely to use all three approaches and should keep an overview of where, when and how this is working. Their staff should also understand there are different methods of working together with other professionals and they may be involved in different ways. Whichever model is being used, staff should be clear about their role, the parameters of their involvement, the process to follow for joint working, and feel they have support from their leaders to work with other agencies for the benefit of the children at the centre of the approach.

This framework is about delivering a number of improvements:

• creating the conditions for consistent multi-agency practice
• making progress through a problem-solving approach
• putting the child at the centre, so their experience is focused on what they need

The national multi-agency practice framework is not intended to duplicate existing guidance, nor does it impose unnecessary changes on local or regional bodies or national agencies who have their own well-established practice models, some of which are set out in partnership arrangements established under legislation. The national multi-agency practice framework seeks to strengthen multi-agency practice throughout Wales by providing a vehicle to draw together good practice and encourage better ways of working more consistently.

This framework links to similar guidance for other sectors such as the information to help schools develop their multi-agency engagement provision for Community Focused Schools.

The framework consists of 5 components for multi-agency practice:

• multi-agency infrastructure
• multi-agency strategy
• multi-agency learning
• multi-agency governance
• multi-agency delivery

Developing successful multi-agency practice involves separate parts of the system coming together to form a reliable, consistent, accessible and compassionate public service for the Welsh population.

Structures

The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 sets out regional partnership arrangements under part 9, delivered through the regional partnership boards. The purpose of the partnership arrangements is to improve outcomes and well-being of people, as well as improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. Regional safeguarding boards are also established under part 7 of the act, and one of their roles is to promote effective multi-agency support for children and adults. These regional boards provide the structure to deliver integrated approaches.

The Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015 (VAWDASV) (sections 5 to 7) also sets out a duty for local authorities and local health boards in Wales to jointly prepare a strategy to outline objectives and actions that contribute to the pursuit of the purpose of the act. Local partnerships must have regard to the most recent for the local authority area under section 14 of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, alongside other relevant assessments as outlined in the VAWDASV Act.

There are different ways of working in partnership with other organisations. Some will be through established teams, which include different professionals, such as integrated family support services, or multi-agency safeguarding hubs. These teams are often co-located or work virtually under a single identity.

There are also multi-agency processes which professionals work with on a daily basis under shared care and support plans for care experienced children. However, the accountability for these ultimately lies with 1 agency.

Multi-agency working often fails when there is no formal structure, process and support in place for staff dealing with complex situations which often arise from a crisis. These will be person specific so will have different practitioners involved and require a tailor made response for the child. This is when leadership and access to decision makers is vital and those involved would benefit from an agreed way of working together at the outset.

Leadership

Collaborative leadership sees a shared model of leadership as being more creative and effective than a leader or group of staff working alone. For it to succeed, it needs committed leadership at a local, regional, and national level with a focus on collaboration. This ensures shared voice, decision-making and goals. 

The accountability for multi-agency practice should be at a senior level in each agency with the authority to make decisions and speak to their counterpart in other agencies. A named senior leader should be willing to work as a team member in local and regional multi-agency executives or meetings to take decisions to deliver joined up services and identify opportunities to dedicate resources to better ways of working with other agencies.

As well as the senior leader, there should be clear points of contact to lead on collaborative working to support the process and the workforce to work together effectively being the go-to person for practitioners within their agency. An agency may work in multiple multi-agency forums so they may prefer to identify specific points of contact for the different areas, such as Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARACs), child protection, complex care, child exploitation or accommodation.

An important aspect of any partnership working is to understand the expectation from each other at the start, so it is important that leaders consider:

• the purpose of the collaboration
• the members and stakeholders who are key to the collaboration
• the roles and responsibilities of those involved
• how the work is being shared and recognised
• whether there is shared accountability

Collaborative leadership can:

• be supported by professional development and training
• be supported by clear communication ensuring that all stakeholders have key knowledge on service areas and of partner organisations
• enable resources and funding to align across agencies
• ensure that services are not duplicated

Resources

Working together to deliver a more efficient and effective service requires a shared vision, common goals and agreed resources to support the service at the outset. Regional Partnership Boards enable local authorities and local health boards to establish pool funds where appropriate which can enable multi-agency working in a planned way; but resources can also be agreed on a case-by-case basis and should be discussed and committed early on.

Staff should be aligned to the team without compromising agency-specific roles and professional accountability, enabling them to work together while keeping in close contact with their own agency. This will need each agency to ensure managers empower staff working on a multi-agency basis whilst ensuring they have strong professional supervision from their own agency.

Individual practitioners should see themselves as members of a multi-agency team and agencies should support each other to increase their levels of capacity and capability in any way they can. 

If new strategies and policies are developed in an agency they should consider how this will impact on their partners and the children and families they serve and consult with them before they are finalised to take account of any feedback and wider implications. The NEST/NYTH framework for achieving a whole system approach can help agencies to assess this impact, using a shared set of principles and an easy to use self assessment tool which facilitates partnership discussion.

Culture of inter-dependence

A commitment to the importance of multi-agency practice should be role-modelled at the top of organisations and extended all the way through to frontlines. 

Practice leaders should encourage practitioners to work with other agencies breaking down barriers and any stigmas associated with other professionals, encouraging more open ways of working. This openness and partnership working approach should apply to both longstanding partners such as health and children’s services teams; and to forming new connections with different agencies and ensuring the trusted adult for the child is involved. The trusted adult may not be from a partner agency, but they will know the child better than other workers and they can help ensure the voice of the child is at the centre of the plan so their involvement will be beneficial.

A joint accountability framework

Staff working on shared goals and outcomes with other agencies will need to know they have the support and structure around them to carry out their roles together. To do this they will benefit from a joint accountability framework that sets out:

• the shared goals and outcomes for the team, project, or the child and family, depending on whether it is a specific issue for one child or a regular meeting/approach to shared issues
• the roles and responsibilities of those working together
• the measures for success, so everyone knows when the goal and outcome have been achieved
• the regular review and monitoring structure around the process
• the resources available to them
• the lines of accountability within and across organisations

Partnership readiness

Partnership readiness means creating the conditions for successful multi-agency practice. Communication across agencies is as important as communication inside agencies; and systems need to link up, within and across organisations.

Shared processes and commonly used forms make joint working more accessible and there are already examples of how this works well, such as child protection processes with regional referral forms.

Transparency is vital. Agencies should share contact details and organisation charts so each agency understands how the other operates and is structured. This way front line practitioners can identify the person they need to speak to for a quick response to a situation. This will avoid time consuming searches for the right person to speak to rather than going through public access points which can delay access and discourage joint working. 

Ultimately, a shared IT system between health and social care will enable agencies to share data so services are more efficient, professionals are kept up to date, and children and families do not need to repeat their information multiple times. 

The Wales Accord for Sharing Personal Information (WASPI) framework provides a practical approach to sharing personal information and providing common standards and templates for developing information sharing protocols and data disclosure agreements. The main aim of WASPI is to help public service providers to deliver effective services while complying with their legal obligations, namely the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. The main public sector bodies are already signed up to Welsh Accord on Sharing of Personal Information (WASPI).

A successful multi-agency strategy for the organisation consolidates the arrangements so there is a common understanding of how the different multi-agency approaches sit together and how they may link up. The strategy may also be integrated into a regional strategy so there is an overarching strategy across partner organisations offering oversight, shared vision and accountability.

The strategy can be used as a communication tool for the workforce, and provide a framework to review multi-agency processes and systems so they are working effectively and tackle barriers to ineffective practice. A useful tool to support reflection is the NEST/NYTH framework for a whole system approach self-assessment tool.

Strategies need to have aligned values, promote a positive multi-agency culture, and a strength based and trauma informed approach setting out a relationship-based approach.

Values-led strategy

The organisation’s strategy should adopt a rights-based approach to services for children promoting the voice of the child, and ensuring professionals treat every child and family with dignity and respect.

Multi-agency culture

Multi-agency culture has to promote the benefits of working together rather than focusing on any challenges, particularly in the early stages. Changing attitudes about working together will take time and leadership.

As much attention needs to be paid to culture as to practicalities and a strong multi-agency culture has the following essential attributes:

• allowing their individual agency requirements and respective professional roles and codes to be followed
• promoting a problem-solving approach through open communication
• promoting information sharing and effective communication channels
• assigning clear roles and responsibilities
• treating everyone equally, whether they are the agency’s own staff, the people they work with, or partner agencies
• breaking down barriers and overcoming stereotypes
• resolving issues quickly through a clear process, and the whole system can see them being resolved
• presenting a shared team approach to children and families
• avoiding assigning blame and taking shared responsibility
• ensuring agency disputes are not re-enacted when individual children are in crisis
• recognising between agencies that all professionals are under pressure and deal with difficult situations on a daily basis

Trauma informed and child centred

The focus should be on resolving the child’s needs with understanding and flexibility in a problem-solving approach, rather than seeing the boundaries of each agency role. This will be dependent on:

• building positive relations between the practitioners and the child
• identifying who the child works well with and enabling that person to be the key worker with the child when possible
• staff in the team being trauma-informed practitioners
• clear points of contact for children, families and professionals with as much continuity in professionals as possible

When multi-agency teams are established learning methods and priorities can be embedded from the outset.

Applying lessons from practice reviews

Agree how the lessons from practice reviews can best be embedded in a way which is helpful rather than burdensome and which builds the confidence of workforces. Reviewing and applying lessons quickly has to be an operational priority, so improvements in practice can be shared and professionals are supported to achieve this without delay to prevent harmful practice. The Single Unified Safeguarding Review (SUSR) is a ground breaking new approach to practice reviews relating to tragic incidents and deaths in Wales with publication of a single unified safeguarding review.

Combining adult practice, child practice, Mental Health Homicide, Domestic Homicide and Offensive Weapon Homicide reviews into 1 single rigorous process, it will prevent the need for families to take part in multiple, often onerous and traumatising reviews. 

The process allows multi-agency review teams to:

• quickly identify learning
• build a greater understanding of what happened during an incident and why
• provide a clear action plan to improve services

Importantly, it will ensure learning is adopted throughout Wales through the world-leading Wales Safeguarding Repository. This digital repository stores all reviews and can be interrogated using social science and machine learning to extract learning, thematic information and good practice.

At a national level, a dedicated Welsh Government Coordination Hub supports delivery of the process and a SUSR support network provides a critical oversight function.

Evidence-based practice

The Joint Inspections of Child Protection Arrangements (JICPA) provided vital information about agencies working together on child protection in Wales.

Academic centres such as CASCADE Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre provide a wealth of current research.

Professional communities of practice hold their own sources of evidence based good practice, such as the Insight Collective.

Data

Each agency, will collect their own data which can be shared and reviewed together so the learning is understood more widely from different perspectives, this would be enhanced by a shared IT system. Sharing data will need to be done within the legal parameters for sharing organisational data if it is not publicly available.

Peer learning

Peer learning is readily available and a useful source of learning and support. This can be done informally through working together or it can be done more formally through reflective discussions.

There are opportunities to learn from other services who have long established multi-agency teams, such as community mental health teams for adults and the potential for similar multi-disciplinary teams in children’s services where there is routine involvement of different professionals presenting as one team to people they work with.

Learning together

Agencies who work regularly together and identify gaps in knowledge or common areas of interest can jointly develop training or research which is specific to their need; in addition to mandatory training, such as statutory VAWDASV training for the public sector in Wales under the National Training Framework.

Good governance of multi-agency practice is based upon agencies holding each other to account by inspiring and supporting each other.

Collaborative government

Collaborative government means integrated services are a priority and government departments locally, regionally and nationally work together to drive forward well-coordinated services to children and their families. This will usually be developed through established structures like the Regional Partnership Boards and Regional Safeguarding Boards, or through legislation which requires agencies to work together on local strategies and implement a multi-agency approach, such as the Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015.

Quality assurance

A multi-agency self-assessment tool should be developed for use in multi-agency teams. A model of self-assessment should be agreed at the outset, and critical to this will be a way of capturing feedback from children and families.

The NEST/NYTH self-assessment tool has been designed for use by any service or project delivering mental health and/or wellbeing services for pregnancy, babies, children, young people and their families. However, NEST/NYTH can be used for a whole system approach more generally. 

Leadership

Leaders need to make sure their relationships with partner agencies are healthy and solution focused. When leaders’ work together to solve the most complex issues across agencies, it shows staff that collaboration is expected and can produce workable solutions.

Creating the conditions for engagement can be facilitated by promoting partnership working through a clear plan for delivery, which will need to:

• include clear guidance for practitioners involved
• ensure delivery is focused on the child
• promote a team approach with a clear model for implementation

Clear guidance

Every multi-agency approach should set out clear roles and responsibilities for professionals involved, who they are accountable to, what resources and shared tools or templates they have, and what common procedures they follow as a minimum from the outset.

Child centered

Listening to the child and taking on board their views about how they want professionals to work with them, so each child is treated as an individual must be central to delivery. Professionals must remember their role is to provide solutions for the child, not act as a gatekeeper for their service.

High-performing teams

Multi-disciplinary teams can transform the way team members think and act. The richness of perspectives can lead to a deeper collective awareness of what children and families need and offer staff safe, motivated and open environments. The ‘team around’ concept is a good example of multi-agency working in practice. This can be the team around the child, the team around the family, the team around the school, the team around the tenant and many other pop-up teams which need to be put in place to help a particular child or family. This is an easy concept for professionals, children and families to grasp.

Agreed model of practice

The delivery model should be clear from the outset. 

Staff will need to know:

• whether the team will be co-located or virtual
• what shared resources and budgets they have
• identify clear communication channels
• what procedures they follow
• what IT systems they use to capture information which is shared

This framework will be a live working document to take account of developments and changes in practice and the policy landscape across Wales.

The framework will be accompanied by tools to support multi-agency practice and link to similar approaches for other organisations.

We welcome feedback on its application and invite you to:

• share your best practice and ideas with us at NPF@gov.wales
• use the Insight Collective to build communities of practice and learning around multi-agency working

The Welsh Government will continue working with local authorities and wider partners to collectively address the need for more and better multi-agency working in a coordinated and fully committed approach to improving the lives of children and families. This will begin with a workshop in summer 2025 bringing together all partners to explore what Wales needs and how it can achieve it.