Working in partnership

You must work with and communicate effectively with colleagues in your team and organisation and with other professionals and agencies. This includes health visitors, nurses, social workers and the police.

You should understand and respect the child protection roles, responsibilities, policies and practices of other agencies and professionals and cooperate with them. You must be clear about your own role and responsibilities in protecting children and young people, and be ready to explain this to colleagues and other professionals.

You should make sure you have effective systems for communicating with health visitors, child protection leads and other statutory agencies, either on a regular basis or as the need arises. You must know who to contact and how to contact them.

If you are asked to take part in child protection procedures, you must cooperate fully. This should include going to child protection conferences, strategy meetings and case reviews to provide information and give your opinion. You may be able to make a contribution, even if you have no specific concerns (for example, general practitioners are sometimes able to share unique insights into a child’s or young person’s family).

If meetings are called at short notice or at inconvenient times, you should still try to go. If this is not possible, you must try to provide relevant information about the child or young person and their family to the meeting, either through a telephone or video conference, in a written report or by discussing the information with another professional (for example, the health visitor), so they can give an oral report at the meeting.