Dawn Bowden MS, Minister for Children and Social Care
The commitment to deliver a National Practice Framework is one of the core elements of our Transformation Programme for Children’s Social Care in Wales. The rationale behind this has always been to improve consistency of practice across Wales and support a strengths-based way of working to ensure the best outcomes for our most vulnerable children and young people in Wales.
A national conversation has been taking place with local authorities and their partners in the delivery of children’s social services across Wales including the third sector, police, and safeguarding boards as well as national bodies such as the Children’s Commissioner. This engagement and open dialogue gathered opinions and evidence about how a National Practice Framework can add the most value. In the last twelve months we have shared two engagement papers. These papers set out the aim of the Framework and how it would work in practice as well as drafts of recommended standards.
The feedback we received highlighted the critical importance of using this work to strengthen multi-agency working, based around 5 strategic standards: Multi-Agency Infrastructure, Multi-Agency Strategy, Multi-Agency Learning, Multi-Agency Governance and Multi-Agency Delivery. To reflect this strategic approach, the Framework’s title has changed to the “National Multi-Agency Practice Strategy for Children”.
However, further work is still required, including on strengthening shared accountability for multi-agency practice with greater clarity of roles, responsibilities and ownership of the strategy. In addition, we must have clear governance arrangements in place to oversee implementation, which do not increase bureaucracy or cause confusion.
The feedback from our engagement tells us that the Framework cannot be a standalone document and further work is required to develop a joint accountability framework, practice notes and resources for front line practitioners drawing on the original suite of standards, for example “children and young people who are missing”, with additional supporting guidance.
To allow time to strengthen the Strategy and the five multi-agency standards, as well as develop the additional resources outlined above, we are working to publish both the Strategy and the first set of practice notes in April this year. Further practice notes will then be published during 2025 and in April we will also begin work on the development of a joint accountability framework.
I wanted to share this update with you and emphasise the importance of getting this Strategy right, supported by the resources to deliver its aim.