RELEVANT CHAPTERS

Working with Parents and Carers

Families First Partnership Programme and Delivery Expectations for Safeguarding Partners

RELEVANT INFORMATION

Working Together to Safeguard Children (Department for Education)

Working Together to Safeguard Children: Animated Video for Children, Young People and their Families (Department for Education)

Working Together to Safeguard Children:  an Illustrated Guide for Children, Young People and their Families (Department for Education)

Children’s Social Care National Framework: Statutory Guidance on the Purpose, Principles for Practice and Expected Outcomes of Children’s Social Care  (Department for Education)

May 2026: This content has been reviewed and updated throughout to reflect recent revisions to the statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children.

1. Introduction

This chapter sets out the key principles and concepts for safeguarding children, as set out in relevant legislation and guidance such as the Children Act 1989 and Working Together to Safeguard Children (Department for Education).

Working Together to Safeguard Children is statutory guidance which sets out key roles for individuals, organisations and agencies to deliver effective arrangements for help, support, safeguarding, and protecting children (anyone who has not yet reached their 18th birthday).

It defines safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children as:

  • providing help and support to meet the needs of children as soon as problems emerge;
  • protecting children from maltreatment, whether that is within or outside the home, including online;
  • preventing impairment of children’s mental and physical health or development;
  • ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care;
  • promoting the upbringing of children with their birth parents, or otherwise their family network through a kinship care arrangement, whenever possible and where this is in the best interests of the children;
  • taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes in line with the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework:
    • outcome 1: children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need;
    • outcome 2: children and young people are safe in and outside their homes;
    • outcome 3: children and young people are supported by their family network;
    • outcome 4: children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes.

Child protection is part of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and is defined as activity that is undertaken to protect specific children who are suspected to be suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm.  This includes harm that occurs inside or outside the home, including in foster care and residential care, as well as online. Effective safeguarding is anti-discriminatory and anti-racist. Practitioners should understand and be sensitive to factors, including economic and social circumstances, ethnicity and disability, which can impact children and families’ lives.

2. Safeguarding – A Shared Responsibility

Successful outcomes for children depend on strong partnership working between parents/carers and the practitioners working with them. Practitioners should take a child-centred approach to meeting the needs of the whole family.

As set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework, the following principles apply:

  • children’s welfare is paramount;
  • children’s wishes and feelings are sought, heard, and responded to;
  • children’s social care works in partnership with whole families;
  • children are raised by their families, with their family networks or in family environments wherever possible;
  • local authorities work with other agencies to effectively identify and meet the needs of children, young people, and families; and
  • local authorities consider the economic and social circumstances impacting children, young people, and families and actively seek to address discrimination and inequality experienced by families.

3. A Child-centred Approach Within a Whole Family Focus

A child-centred approach is fundamental to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of every child. All practitioners should follow the principles of the Children Acts 1989 and 2004. These Acts make clear that the welfare of children is paramount and that they are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless compulsory intervention in family life is necessary.

Children are clear about what they want from an effective safeguarding system.  Children have said that they need:

  • vigilance: to have adults notice when things are troubling them;
  • understanding and action: to understand what is happening; to be heard and understood; and to have that understanding acted upon;
  • stability: to be able to develop an ongoing stable relationship of trust with those helping them;
  • respect: to be treated with the expectation that they are competent rather than not;
  • information and engagement: to be informed about, and involved in procedures, decisions, concerns and plans;
  • explanation: to be informed of the outcome of assessments, and decisions and reasons when their views have not met with a positive response;
  • support: to be provided with support in their own right as well as a member of their family;
  • advocacy: to be provided with advocacy to assist them in putting forward their views;
  • protection: to be protected against all forms of abuse, exploitation, and discrimination, and the right to special protection and help if a refugee.

Anyone working with children should see and speak to the child, listen to what they say, observe their behaviour, take their views seriously, and work with them and their families and the people who know them well when deciding how to support their needs.

Practitioners should also be aware that children may find it difficult to always speak about what they need, what is happening to them, or what has happened to them. Legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 must be complied with, including putting special provision in place to support dialogue with children who may not be able to convey their wishes and feelings as they may want to. This might include, for example, those who have communication difficulties, unaccompanied children, refugees, those children who are victims of modern slavery and/or human trafficking and those who do not speak English or for whom English is not their first language.

Practitioners must maintain a child-centred approach for babies, recognising their specific vulnerabilities and ensuring that their needs and experiences are actively considered and represented.  This includes, but is not limited to, interpreting non-verbal and pre-verbal cues, observing interactions, and remaining professionally curious, particularly when relying on parent or carer accounts. The needs of unborn children should also be considered where there are concerns.

This approach sits within a whole family culture in which the needs of all members of the family are explored as individuals and how their needs impact on one another is drawn out.

This child-centred approach is supported by:

  • the Children Act 1989, which requires local authorities to give due consideration to a child’s wishes when determining what services to provide under section 17 and before making decisions about action to be taken to protect individual children under section 47. These duties complement requirements relating to the wishes and feelings of children who are, or may be, looked after, including those who are provided with accommodation under section 20 and children taken into police protection;
  • the Equality Act 2010, which puts a responsibility on public authorities to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and promote equality of opportunity. This applies to the process of identification of need and risk faced by the individual child and the process of assessment. No child or group of children must be treated any less favourably than others in being able to access effective services which meet their particular needs. To comply with the Equality Act 2010, safeguarding partners must assess and where appropriate put in place measures ahead of time to support all children and families to access services, overcoming any barriers they may face due to a particular protected characteristic (see also Equality, Diversity and Human Rights);
  • the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which is an international agreement that protects the rights of children and provides a child centred framework for the development of services to children. The UK Government ratified the UNCRC in 1991 and, by doing so, recognises children’s rights including to expression and receiving information;
  • the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 recognises that children can be victims of domestic abuse in their own right if they see, hear or experience the effects of domestic abuse and are related to either victim or perpetrator of the abuse, or either the victim or perpetrator of the abuse has parental responsibility for that child;
  • the Children’s Social Care National Framework, statutory guidance that sets out the purpose of children’s social care as existing to support children and families, to protect children by intervening decisively when they are at risk of harm and to provide care for those who need it, so they grow up and thrive with safety, stability, and love.

In addition to practitioners shaping support around the needs of individual children, organisations and agencies should have a clear understanding of the collective needs of children locally when commissioning effective services. Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) are required to have executive lead roles for children, children with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and for safeguarding (individual roles or combined as part of one role). It is expected that these executive leads will work with key partners across public health, social care, justice, and education to ensure the interests of those groups are met, including that appropriate resources are allocated for the provision of services and maintaining an overview of the quality of services. As part of that process, the Director of Public Health, informed by the relevant ICB Executive Leads, should ensure that the needs of children are a key part of the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) developed by the Health and Wellbeing Board. Safeguarding partners should use this assessment to help them understand the prevalence and contexts of need, including specific needs relating to disabled children and those relating to abuse, neglect and exploitation, which in turn should help shape services.

3.1 Helping children understand safeguarding

All children should be helped, supported and protected when things are difficult. The Department for Education and the National Children’s Bureau have worked with children and young people to create resources to explain to children, young people and their families how individuals, organisations and agencies work together to help, support and protect them:

An illustrated guide for children, young people and their families

 

4. Principles for Working with Parents and Carers

In the context of a child-centred approach, all practitioners should work in partnership with parents and carers as far as possible. Parents and carers need to understand what is happening, what they can expect from the help and support provided, what is expected of them and be supported to say what they think.

This is particularly important when there is reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm and whether the harm is from inside or outside the home, including online. Working collaboratively will mean parents and carers have the best chance of making changes, and practitioners can make fair and accurate decisions about how to support children of all ages and keep them safe. While collaborative relationships between practitioners and parents and carers are important, the wishes and feelings of the child and what is in their best interest remain central to decision-making. This includes those non-verbal and pre-verbal children and babies who will communicate their experiences through their appearance, behaviour, physical and emotional development and their interactions with trusted adults. Practitioners need to be particularly skilled in engaging and working with parents and carers whom services have found difficult to engage. Some examples may be parents and carers of disabled children, parents and carers whose children are at risk of, or experiencing, harm from outside the home, or birth parents who have had other children removed. Practitioners also need to recognise, engage, and work with parents and carers who are unwilling or unable to engage with services such as those experiencing abusive behaviour within their own intimate relationships, which may include coercive or controlling behaviour, teenage relationship abuse and ‘honour’ abuse including forced marriage and female genital mutilation, or abuse related to faith or belief such as allegations of demonic possession.  Four principles underpin work with parents and carers:

1) Effective partnership working with parents and carers happens when practitioners build strong, positive, trusting, and co-operative relationships by:

  • approaching families and their wider family networks and communities with empathy, respect, compassion, and creativity;
  • avoiding reinforcing family shame, suffering, and blaming;
  • using strength-based approaches, working with parents and carers to identify what is working well and how their strengths could support them to effect positive change;
  • ensuring they work sensitively with parents, carers, and children, to identify and understand the impact of adversity and trauma in their lives. They seek to understand how adversity and trauma might manifest and affect children and parents’ engagement and use their expertise to adapt their response with care and compassion;
  • adapting their responses to meet the diverse needs of parents and carers, including fathers and male carers, and the specific challenges being faced, including parents and carers of disabled children, and where harm is outside the home;
  • ensuring they understand the families’ background, ethnicity, religion, financial situation, ability, education, sex, ages and sexual orientation, and potential barriers these create in seeking and accessing help and support;
  • being alert and recognising where parents or carers may not be acting in the best interest of the child or where children may be experiencing abuse, neglect, and exploitation as a result of actions by parents, carers, or other individuals in their lives. Practitioners use their skills and expertise to adapt their response to secure engagement;
  • being mindful of negative stereotypes when making decisions which might lead to false assumptions;

2) Verbal and non-verbal communication should be respectful, non-blaming, clear, inclusive, and adapted to parents’ and carers’ needs. Practitioners should ensure that all materials provided to children, parents, carers, and families are jargon free, developmentally appropriate and in a format that is easily understood. Where appropriate, material provided to children, parents, carers, and families should be made accessible and translated into their first language if necessary. Professional interpreters should be provided where needed. Practitioners should not need to rely on family members or partners for interpretation services, including British Sign Language.

3) Practitioners empower parents and carers to participate in decision-making to help, support and protect children by:

  • creating a culture of “no surprises”, for example, making parents and carers aware of who will attend meetings and discussions, if the child will be invited to participate and the format of the meeting or discussion;
  • explaining that parents and carers can bring a family member, a friend or supporter to meetings;
  • giving parents and carers adequate preparation at every stage, relevant information, a safe and appropriate environment for participation and suitable access arrangements;
  • signposting parents and carers to sources of help and support available locally or through the local authority;
  • helping parents and carers to understand what the issues are and how these impact on the child, what decisions could be made, what changes need to be made, why and how, timescales and possible outcomes;

4) Practitioners involve parents, carers, families, and local communities in designing processes that affect them, including those focused on safeguarding children. They value their contributions, expertise and knowledge reflecting them in service design and continuously seek feedback from parents, carers, family networks, children, and local communities to inform service improvements. Practitioners use feedback from parents and carers to reflect on their own practice.

5. Expectations for Multi-agency Working

Working Together to Safeguard Children sets out that strong multi-agency and multi-disciplinary working is vital to identifying and responding to the needs of children and families. The following expectations have been developed to underpin this multi-agency working. They apply to all agencies and practitioners involved in safeguarding and protecting children. Specifically, these include police, local authorities and health services., It also includes organisations and agencies that provide placements for children, for example foster and residential care, probation services, youth offending services, early education  and childcare settings, schools, colleges and other education providers, and voluntary and third sector organisations. The term practitioners used here refers to all those working in these services and settings. A whole family approach should also mean children and adult services working together to identify needs and provide support and services for the whole family.

The expectations are structured at three levels for strategic leaders, senior and middle managers, and direct practice.

Strategic leaders may include Chief Executives of local authorities, Chief Executives of ICBs, Chief Executives of NHS Trusts, Chief Constables, Police and Crime Commissioners, education strategic leads within safeguarding partnerships and Chief Executives of multi-academy trusts.

Senior and middle managers may include Directors of Children’s services, heads of services and team managers in local authorities, designated and named professionals (GP, nurse, doctor, midwife) in health, the Chief Superintendent and Chief Inspector (and equivalents) in police, head teachers, designated safeguarding leads and nursery managers in education.

Those in direct practice include frontline social workers, health visitors and midwives, police constables, teachers, children’s homes staff, independent reviewing officers and those working in the voluntary and community sector.

The practitioners listed as examples for each level is not exhaustive, decision-making structures will differ by area, and local areas should consider how best to apply these standards to match their local approach.

Multi-agency expectations for strategic leaders are as follows:

  • collaborate: leaders develop a shared vision for how their services work together to deliver shared goals;
  • learn: leaders use evidence from direct practice in their area so that they know and can evaluate what is and isn’t working well for children and families;
  • resource: leaders are ambitious about helping, supporting, and protecting children in their area and jointly prioritise and share resources accordingly;
  • include: leaders create an inclusive and anti-discriminatory culture where diversity is understood, and multi-agency and multi-disciplinary working is celebrated;
  • mutual challenge: leaders hold each other and their teams to account and are held to account by their teams for the quality of the partnership working.

Multi-agency expectations for senior and middle managers are as follows:

  • collaborate: decisions are based on a shared practice approach and constructive debate and analysis of information from all services;
  • learn: managers ensure their teams have time to engage in peer learning and knowledge exchange, peer audit, group supervision and observation;
  • resource: managers ensure children receive the holistic support they need, drawing in expertise from a wide range of agencies;
  • include: managers support staff to identify and challenge discrimination, disparity, and negative stereotypes;
  • mutual challenge: constructive challenge within and across agencies and disciplines is actively encouraged, independent judgements are valued and given space alongside collective decision-making to avoid groupthink.

Multi-agency expectations for direct practice are as follows:

  • collaborate: practitioners working with the same child and family share information to get a complete picture of what life is like for the child. Collectively, they ensure the child’s voice is at the centre and the right support is provided.  They work in partnership with parents and carers, who are often experts on the children they care for and involve them in decisions wherever possible;
  • learn: practitioners learn together by drawing on the best available evidence from their individual fields and sharing their diverse perspectives during regular shared reflection on a child’s development, experiences, and outcomes;
  • resource: practitioners build strong relationships across agencies and disciplines to ensure they support and protect the children with whom they work;
  • include: practitioners recognise the differences between, and are confident to respond to, circumstances where children experience adversity due to economic and social circumstances and acute family stress, and situations where children face harm due to parental abuse and neglect;
  • mutual challenge: practitioners challenge themselves and each other, question each other’s assumptions, and seek to resolve differences of opinion in a restorative and respectful way. This includes providing feedback, advice, and strategies to challenge racism and discrimination, and modelling constructive and effective strategies to respond.

Children’s Social Care National Framework:  Statutory Guidance on the Purpose, Principles for Practice and Expected Outcomes of Children’s Social Care sets out that all organisations, including safeguarding partners and relevant agencies, should use the National Framework to:

  • raise aspirations for what high-quality, evidence-informed support and practice with children, young people and families can achieve;
  • establish a shared approach and strong relationships across agencies, so everyone can engage constructively in delivering effective support to children, young people and families;
  • embed voices of children, young people and families in the design and delivery of services and support;
  • determine the right support, challenge, and accountability across agencies so that everyone can work towards the goal of seeing families thrive, and understand the impact of their services in helping to deliver that ambition.

6. Delivering Evidence Based Interventions

The Families Foundations Toolkit from the What Works Centre for Children and Families includes:

  • Foundations Guidebook – information about interventions that make a difference to children and families’ outcomes;
  • Practice Guides – recommendations about how to put evidence-based support into action.

The Practice Guides provide evidence-based recommendations for those commissioning and delivering child and family support at the local level, and the Guidebook provides evidence-based examples of interventions that put these practices into action.

The Practice Guides set out high quality evidence about how best to achieve the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework and translates this into key principles and recommendations to support local leaders in strengthening family services.

Guidance: Families First Partnership Programme – Delivery Expectations for Safeguarding Partners in England (Department for Education) states that local partnerships should look to the Practice Guides as a key source for guidance on the latest evidence.

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