Children and young people

The Children Act 2004 identifies and places a responsibility on child practitioners to work together to help a child meet the following five priority outcomes:

• be healthy,
• stay safe,
• enjoy and achieve,
• make a positive contribution,
• achieve economic wellbeing.

To achieve this aim, emphasis is placed on identifying and addressing a child’s needs at an early stage, before they become problematic and intractable. This will require some change to the way that child practitioners have worked up to now.

Emphasis will be on adopting a holistic approach to identifying a child’s needs at an early stage and of working with the family and other agencies to identify ways of meeting these needs.

Practitioners will be expected to agree between them who is the best person to lead the support being given to an individual child at any one point in time. This "lead professional" may change as the child’s needs change and develop.

The government has asked all parties working with children to use a common format to assess the needs of individual children who are at risk or vulnerable in some way. It has asked that all professionals use the same form to record their concerns and knowledge about a child to avoid duplication and the loss of vital information about a child that may help make an effective assessment of their needs. This is particularly important in terms of avoiding the outcome in the case of Victoria Climbié, who tragically died partly because the information sharing between agencies was not effective. This common approach is known as the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) process.

ContactPoint (formerly known as the Information Sharing (IS) Index) is a secure electronic tool which will provide a quick way for practitioners working with children and young people to find out who else is working with that child or young person, making it easier to deliver more co-ordinated support.

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