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National Guidance


Professionals support children within the framework of safeguarding and child protection key legislation. Additional statutory and non-statutory guidance is issued by the government to support practice.


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Multi-agency Practice Guidance

Working Together 2010

Working Together sets out how organisations and individuals should work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people in accordance with the Children Act 1989 (external link) and the Children Act 2004 (external link).

Part 1 of this document is issued as statutory guidance. Practitioners and agencies will have different responsibilities under different areas of the guidance and should consult the preface for a fuller explanation of their statutory duties. Part 2 of the document is issued as non-statutory practice guidance.


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Assessment Framework 2000

The aim of the practice guidance is to make transparent the evidence base for the Assessment Framework, thereby assisting professionals in their tasks of analysis, judgement and decision making.

The development of the Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (external link), jointly issued by the Department of Health, the Department for Education and Employment and the Home Office, has drawn heavily, from many disciplines, on the wealth of research and accumulated practice experience about the developmental needs of children.


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Information Sharing: Guidance for Practitioners and Managers 2008


Information sharing is key to delivering better and more efficient public services that are coordinated around the needs of children, young people and families.


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What to Do if You're Worried a Child is Being Abused 2006


This document provides best practice guidance for those who work with children in order to safeguard their welfare. It also contains an appendix to help practitioners with the legal issues affecting the sharing of information. The guidance provides general information for anyone whose work brings them into contact with children and families, focusing particularly on those who work in social care, health, education and criminal justice services.

Addressing issues affecting each of these target audiences, the document outlines:

  • what you should do if you have concerns about a child's welfare
  • what will happen once you have informed someone about those concerns
  • what further contribution you may be asked or expected to make to the processes of assessment, planning, working with children, and reviewing that work.

The guidance is accompanied with flowcharts following the procedure from referral, initial assessment, emergency action that might need to be taken, through to what happens after a strategy discussion and child protection review conference.


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Children's Trusts

Children's Trusts are the sum total of cooperation arrangements and partnerships between local organisations, with a role in improving outcomes for children and young people.


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Think Family

Think Family (external link) is a cross-departmental programme jointly funded by Department for Education, the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health, and supported by the Department of Communities and local government. These guidance and protocols call for adults and children's services and health and voluntary sector partners to work more closely together and take a whole family approach to secure better outcomes for children from families with complext needs.


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Managing Risk and Minimising Mistakes

This report is about how organisations can learn from mistakes. In the past, learning has tended to take place when things have gone seriously wrong for children, when they have been hurt or, worse, killed. The report discusses an organisational focus on learning, best described as ‘learning from experience’ in the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié.

It aims to shift the focus and start a debate about the management of risk at an organisational level, as distinct from the assessment of need for an individual child. The report demonstrates that there are ways to learn from potentially adverse events before harm is caused to children and their families. This paper aims to support the introduction of the Children Act 2004 (external link) in England and Wales, including the development of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs).


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Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education 2007


This document details the duties for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in education, including recruitment and selection processes, recruitment and vetting checks, and dealing with allegations of abuse against teachers and other staff.


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When to suspect child maltreatment

The advice in this guideline from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - NICE (external link) covers the alerting features in children and young people (under 18 years) of:

  • physical, sexual and emotional abuse
  • neglect
  • fabricated or induced illness

The guideline does not specifically look at the risk factors for child maltreatment, the identification of child maltreatment and procedures for supporting the child or young person, education and information for parents or children or young people, or training for healthcare professionals.



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Disabled Children

This guidance is aimed at Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) partners and other professionals working with children and young people and their families. It is intended to help them safeguard and promote the welfare of disabled children and young people. It is supplementary to, and should be used in conjunction with, the statutory guidance, Working Together 2010 (PDF, 2.5Mb).



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Fabricated Illness

This guidance is intended to provide a national framework within which agencies and professionals at local level - individually and jointly - draw up and agree upon their own more detailed ways of working together where illness may be being fabricated or induced in a child by a carer who has parenting responsibilities for him or her.


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Reviews of Child Protection Services


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