Multi-agency working and safeguarding

Multi-agency working refers to a way of working that involves professionals from different agencies collaboratively combining their skills, expertise and knowledge, with the joint goal of meeting an individual’s needs, including multiple and compound needs. Good communication, common goals, understanding, and teamwork is essential for effective multi-agency working.

Working effectively together is critical to safeguarding to ensure that a high standard of coordinated care is provided to the adult, allowing them to feel better supported and more engaged within their own care. Multi-agency working allows for best practice, experience, and skill sharing, increasing learning opportunities and leads to positive working relationships which in turn, increases the likelihood of positive outcomes for the adult.

For more information, please see the Gov.uk 'Revisiting safeguarding practice' guidance on safeguarding practice, which references multi-agency working.

Multi-agency meetings

The Local Government Association (LGA) highlights that collaborative working enables organisations to achieve outcomes and deliver value that would be challenging, or even impossible, to accomplish independently.

As such, multi-agency meetings, whether conducted in person or virtually, provide the most effective means for ensuring robust information sharing, clear communication, and shared responsibility in assessing risks to an adult and developing an action plan to address those risks.

Any agency may initiate a multi-agency meeting; ideally, this should be the organisation most actively involved in supporting the individual. In cases where a Section 42 enquiry is active and the local authority has delegated the enquiry to another agency, that lead agency may take responsibility for coordinating the multi-agency response.

There are circumstances when a meeting should be considered, such as:

Addressing self-neglect
Sharing risk and creating safety plans
Coordinating safeguarding responses and addressing concerns around quality of care
Aligning criminal investigations with safeguarding enquiries
Reviewing outcomes and agreeing safeguarding plans
Managing complex cases involving multiple safeguarding enquiries, such as organisational abuse

Multi-agency meetings should follow a structured agenda that covers all relevant areas, and there must be a clear record of the actions agreed, who is responsible, and the timelines for completion. This includes determining who will take the lead on specific tasks related to risk management and safety planning.

It is good practice identify a professional(s) to coordinate the involvement of all agencies. This professional will act as the single point of contact and maintains oversight of the case, ensuring consistent and aligned support across organisations for adults with complex needs.

All decisions and actions agreed in multi-agency meetings should be thoroughly documented in the adult’s records, this may include safeguarding plans, risk assessments, care plans, or case notes. This documentation provides evidence of the steps being taken to reduce risk. Every agency involved should receive a copy of the safeguarding plan or meeting minutes.

If a multi-agency meeting is not possible to convene, professionals should still work together through virtual meetings, phone calls, or emails to share information, seek advice, and agree on necessary actions. The lead agency supporting the adult should take responsibility for driving this forward.

Where there is professional disagreement across agencies regarding the approach to an adult’s care, the Derbyshire and Derby Safeguarding Adults Boards Complaints Policy and Process and the DSAB Escalation Process for Professionals should be followed. These protocols support consistent and timely decision-making in safeguarding and include a streamlined escalation process to ensure relevant safeguarding leads are consulted when appropriate.

Important aspects of multi-agency working

Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) is a national approach to promote responses to safeguarding situations in a way that enhances involvement, choice and control as well as improving quality of life, wellbeing, and safety. It is about seeing people as experts in their own lives and working alongside them to identify the outcomes they want, with the aim of enabling them to resolve their circumstances and support their recovery.

Agencies are encouraged to actively involve the adult in discussions about their care, and to ensure that written evidence of the adult’s views and thoughts are recorded and shared with relevant agencies. By doing so, the adult is kept central to the multi-disciplinary work taking place.

If a discussion with the adult is not possible or has not taken place, it is vital that the reason for this is also recorded in their care plan and/or other records. In addition, any multi-agency meeting where the person is not in attendance must consider the views of the adult and address how these will be responded to views of family, carers, friends or advocates should be sought and also recorded to evidence that a person-centred approach has been adopted.

Information sharing

Sharing information with the right people at the right time is vital to good practice and effective safeguarding. It allows professionals to make fully informed decisions about what action is best to take and how. All agencies have a responsibility to share any relevant information they have which may protect an adult from abuse or neglect.

Ideally, adults should provide consent before information about them is shared. They have the right to refuse, however, this wish can be overridden in circumstances which place them and/or others at significant risk of harm. For more information, please see the Derby Safeguarding Adults Board Information Sharing Agreement. There are also some useful resources on the SCIE website.

Multi-agency risk assessment

Risk assessment is the process of working with an adult to improve safety and to reduce future risk. Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) is an integral part of safeguarding and professionals should adopt a strengths-based, flexible, and enabling approach to managing risk with the person and their network.

Casework involving significant risks often require a multi-agency approach, underpinned by clear and timely information sharing and shared risk-assessing resulting in multi-agency risk management plans. These should be proportionate and focussed on preventing, reducing or eliminating the future risk of harm. Risks can be evaluated through multi-agency meetings and should be reviewed regularly to reassess the level and nature of the risk.

Risk assessments and risk plans should clearly record:

all relevant and anticipated risks
the adult’s views and wishes
what action is being taken and by whom
any issues with mental capacity and how this is to be addressed including the need, where appropriate, for best interest decisions
how the understanding of risk and the actions available to support is shared with the adult.

Communication and developing working relationships

Effective communication is essential to enable professionals to develop strong working relationships, trust and shared ownership when supporting an adult with care and support needs. When working together, professionals from across different organisations should seek to understand and respect each other’s roles in supporting the adult, as well as offering the flexibility which may be required to gain the best possible outcome for the adult. This will help to set expectations, clarify responsibilities; and avoid any misunderstanding when sharing work.

Supervision and Management oversight

Skilled and knowledgeable supervision focused on outcomes for adults is critical in adult safeguarding. Managers have a central role in ensuring high standards of practice and that practitioners are properly equipped and supported. Employers should ensure they have robust management systems in place for training and support.

It is important that all safeguarding cases have supervision and management oversight. Supervision should encourage reflective practice and professional curiosity and should check that relevant actions to reduce risk to a vulnerable adult have been best explored in collaboration with multi-agency professionals.

Systems and Processes

It is important to recognise that agencies often have different systems and processes, including for the way they record information. Access to this information to professionals outside of the organisation is often restricted. This emphasises the importance of information sharing with other agencies, which can be arranged through other methods of communication including emails, telephone calls, or multi-agency meetings.