King's College London

As part of their contribution to the SOCRATES project (the Social Care Rapid Evaluation Team) a new paper from Unit researchers Carl Purcell, Mary Baginsky and Nicole Steils in The British Journal of Social Work explores the design and implementation of multi-agency structures and working practices in child safeguarding.

SOCRATES is a group of researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Lancashire and King's College London. Funded by the NIHR (2023-28), it is rapidly evaluating some new services and changes in social care for adults and children.

The new paper derives from the SOCRATES project, Agencies working together to keep children safe and share the right information: Working with men (SRIM), which is conducted by the three authors.

From the abstract: 'The failure of public agencies such as children’s social care (CSC), health and the police to share information about children and families has been repeatedly identified as a factor contributing to missed opportunities to protect children from harm in England. Specific failings relating to information on men in children’s lives who may pose a danger have also been highlighted, including in the Myth of the Invisible Men report published by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Successive governments have sought to address these failings by mandating the reform of local multi-agency governance structures and by seeking to influence day-to-day interactions between agencies including CSC, health, the police, schools and others with child safeguarding responsibilities. This article offers a critical perspective on the most recent reforms by drawing on previous research on the barriers and facilitators to information-sharing and findings from four case studies that examined local initiatives that have aimed to improve information-sharing. We identify three key themes that we argue need to be carefully considered in the design and implementation of multi-agency structures and working practices: (1) resources and organizational commitment to multi-agency working; (2) communication between professionals; and (3) competing perspectives on sharing information without consent.'

This publication

Carl Purcell, Mary Baginsky, Nicole Steils, (2025) 'No quick fixes: Multi-agency working to improve information-sharing on men and keep children safe,' The British Journal of Social Work, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcaf249