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Professionals' Area

Everyone in contact with children, young people and families in the course of their everyday work, including people who do not have a specific role in relation to child protection, has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

All Haringey professionals should be familiar with:

Find more information on:

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Thresholds of Need and Support

The level of risk to a child will determine the professional intervention required.

Haringey's continuum of need and intervention (PDF, 129Kb) lists four main levels of risk and intervention - with the first level representing children with universal needs accessing universal services (such as statutory schooling and health services) and the fourth level representing the most vulnerable children with acute and highly complex needs.

Level 2 may require a Common Assessment Framework, while Level 3 may require statutory involvement by social workers.

See the London Safeguarding Children's Board's guidance on Thresholds and CAF (external link).

Downloads

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Roles & Responsibilities

We know from Serious Case Reviews over the years that one of the main problems in inter-agency working is professionals not understanding others' roles and remits.

Workers can suffer from magical thinking - such as, if a social worker is allocated, the child must be fine. Workers can assume that others know what they know simply because they are working with the family. Workers can assume that others are taking certain actions without checking that they are.

Another problem can be the use of discipline-specific jargon. As workers, we use short-hand language to make things easier. Within the same group of professionals, this is useful. However, language will mean different things to different professionals. If we are not totally clear, there is room for misinterpretation - which can be dangerous.

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