Social workers will need to meet legally mandated requirements to work as lead child protection practitioners (LCPPs), the government has said.
Regulations will set out minimum requirements for the role, along with those of the health, police and education professionals who will work alongside LCPPs within multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs), said the Department for Education (DfE).
In a policy paper setting out its plans for the regulations, the DfE stated that MACPTs would be made responsible for a wide range of core safeguarding functions, including convening strategy meetings and conferences, and overseeing child protection plans.
It added that MACPTs would also be expected to provide advice to other agencies on child protection and operate in line with their own practice framework.
Children's social care reforms
MACPTs were first proposed by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel's 2022 report on the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, to tackle deficits in multi-agency working and ensure child protection practice was carried out by those with specialist skills.
Around the same time, the Independent Review of Children's Social Care proposed the creation of an expert child protection social work role, held by those with high levels of skills and knowledge, to lead on safeguarding cases.
Both ideas were taken up by the then Conservative government and its Labour successor, and establishing MACPTs, including LCPPs, is one of three elements of the Families First Partnership (FFP) reforms being currently rolled out across England.
These are designed to improve support to families - chiefly through multidisciplinary family help teams - to enable more children to remain with their parents, while also enhancing the quality of child protection practice.
Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill
At the same time, the government is legislating, through its Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, to put MACPTs on a statutory footing from 2027.
Under the bill, safeguarding partners - councils, NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) and police forces - must establish at least one MAPCT for their area, to support the relevant local authority in its duties to investigate and act on child protection concerns under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.
The ICB will be required to nominate at least one health professional, the police at least one officer and the local authority at least one social worker and person with education experience, and the council may appoint other appropriate individuals after consultation with safeguarding partners.
What multi-agency teams will have to do
The bill, which will shortly complete its passage through Parliament, provides for the government to make regulations in relation to three areas:
- The support MACPTs must provide to councils in fulfilling their section 47 duties.
- The requirements nominated team members must fulfil, including in relation to qualifications or experience relating to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children.
- Designating agencies who may be required to work with safeguarding partners to facilitate the operation of MACPTs.
On the first point, DfE policy paper said that it intended the regulations to require MACPTs to carry out the following functions:
- Convening strategy discussions, to determine if the trigger for a section 47 enquiry - that there is reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm - and to make the threshold decision with input from practitioners who know the family.
- Leading section 47 enquiries, with practitioners ensuring their host agency seek and share information and supporting the local authority to decide what, if any, action is needed to protect the child as a consequence.
- Convening and chairing child protection conferences, to make decisions as to how best to safeguard a child, with regulations potentially also requiring MACPTs to ensure the right practitioners attend, information sharing is timely, decisions are based on the best available evidence and families are supported to fully participate.
- Overseeing the development, review and closure of child protection plans and informing decisions about whether to move into pre-proceedings.
- Providing case consultation for practitioners who need MACPT expertise, to support the timely identification of significant harm and reduce unnecessary intrusion into family life where child protection is not needed.
Alongside these functional requirements, the DfE said it wanted the regulations to require MACPTs to have an agreed practice framework that includes senior management oversight and accountability for delivery.
Minimum requirements for MACPT staff
The department said the qualifications and experience required of MACPT practitioners generally would include:
- knowledge and understanding of the statutory child protection framework;
- an applied understanding of what constitutes actual or likely significant harm;
- contributing effectively to assessment of needs, understanding the indicators of abuse, neglect and exploitation;
- building an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the child’s daily life to establish the likelihood of significant harm;
- the ability to assess information for effective and reliable decision-making;
- respecting and constructively challenging multi-agency perspectives to reach the best intervention and outcome for the child;
- ensuring interventions are prompt, evidence-based and tailored to the child;
- listening to what children tell them to help them and their family;
- having an appropriate level of seniority so they have the authority to make child protection decisions and mobilise input from practitioners from their agency.
Lead child protection practitioners expectations
The FFP programme guide, published last year, set expectations for the LCPP role including that they should have "substantial frontline child protection experience" and in-depth legislative knowledge and know how to work skillfully and confidently with families, including those who have been resistant, hostile or deceptive.
The latest policy paper did not confirm whether these would be set out in regulations, and also did not confirm whether they would specify a minimum level of post-qualifying experience that LCPPs should have.
The DfE said some employers had set such a requirement, however, it added that many had recognised that length of service was "just one component alongside good continuous professional development and strong evidence of competency in child protection".
The DfE is also planning to introduce an advance child protection framework setting out the knowledge and skills required of expert practitioners in this area. However, the policy paper did not suggest that this would be used to determine requirements for LCPPs.
Partner agencies required to support MACPTs
The bill also allows for regulations that would designate agencies that would be under a requirement to sign a memorandum of co-operation with safeguarding partners to facilitate the operation of MACPTs if requested to do so by partners.
The DfE said the agencies most likely to be designated are probation, youth offending teams and youth custody settings, British Transport Police, charities working children and families, religious organisations, schools and further education settings, pupil referral units and alternative educational provision and NHS trusts and foundations trusts.
What happens next?
The DfE said it would engage with the sector and use emerging evidence from the FFP programme to develop the regulations, which would then be subject to consultation before being put before both Houses of Parliament for approval.
