Central intelligence

It is no wonder that social workers often regard child protection as a jigsaw, since information from a wide range of services is required to complete the picture. But too often – through a lack of information sharing and understanding across health, social care, police and other agencies – pieces are left out, sometimes with tragic consequences.

The 2009 Laming report into the death of Peter Connelly in Haringey was one of a number of inquiries and serious case reviews in recent years to come to the same conclusion: children are best protected when agencies work together and share intelligence.

With this purpose in mind, a particular set-up is now taking hold across the country: the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (widely referred to as “Mash”). Here, social care, police and other professionals are co-located and investigate safeguarding concerns as a team.

For every referral made to the hub, Mash staff will gather all the information available on a child and family from each agency to decide the most appropriate level of response. It is increasingly seen as the best way of ensuring that partnerships are formed and that they are effective. Among high-profile supporters is Professor Eileen Munro, who said that Mash teams were “proving more efficient than previous arrangements” in her review of the child protection system in England.

England’s first Mash was set up in Devon in 2010. Ofsted praised it as “an example of effective joint working” in its subsequent report, Good Practice by Local Safeguarding Children Boards.

Further evaluation by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NfER) judged that the Devon Mash was helping children’s social work teams to prioritise the most urgent cases, resulting in saved time and resources. That early-stage study showed that 48 per cent of enquiries to the hub resulted in a referral to children’s social care, four per cent more than before its introduction.

Another 24 per cent were referred to “early response” services. No data was available on cases referred to Tier 2 services prior to the Mash but interviewees said that the provision of additional support became more common.

Cheryl Coppell is chair of the cross-capital London Safeguarding Children Board and chief executive of the London Borough of Havering. She says evidence such as this has helped persuade every London borough to set up a Mash by 2014. Eighteen Mash teams are already up and running nationwide but Coppell predicts every English area will have one, particularly as specific examples emerge of how they are improving children’s and families’ lives.

For instance, Coppell recalls a recent police referral to Havering’s Mash involving a young boy suspected of stealing a bike. She says: “Because they could work together on this, the Mash team quickly uncovered a bigger picture. The boy had a dad in prison that was about to be released and a mum with mental health problems.”

The police lead for Havering’s Mash, Detective Sergeant Keith Oddy, lauds the benefits of co-location for instant information sharing across agencies. He cites the example of a call from the police to the hub regarding an antisocial behaviour incident at a house where a child lived. “Through working together we were able to quickly assess this was a child neglect case,” he says. “The house was used by drug dealers and was unsafe for them. The children were removed from the house the same day that the call came to us.”

The links between police and social care in the Mash are particularly important in targeting paedophiles, adds Oddy.

“We have had three incidents over the last five months of paedophiles being highlighted as moving on and making contact with another family. That process of identifying such a person would have taken far longer before the Mash,” he says.

Mash teams across the country vary in shape and size. Most have a core team of social workers, police officers and at least one health professional. Other members might include education welfare and support officers, probation officers, youth offending services workers and housing officers.