Partnership With Children

Partnership with children, young people, their parents and family members has become a vital part in interagency working to ensure that children are safeguarded (HM Gov 2015). The importance of this can be acknowledged from the fact that it is a repetitive theme in the Children Act (Williams 1997), also New Labour policy highlighted the significance of this after weaknesses were found in agencies working together to safeguard children(Dunhill et al. 2009). This essay will discuss how partnership with young people, their parents and families is important in interagency working and will argue that barriers can occur, but can be overcome.

Interagency working is where two or more agencies are working together in a planned and a formal way, providing

It is widely believed that the relationships parents have with their children are strongly related to the children’s outcomes (DCSF 2010). Hence, working in partnership with parents helps to meet the needs of children effectively as they play a fundamental role in their well-being, also share the same goal as professionals in safeguarding children (Davis 2011). Moreover, the key aspect of partnership with parents is to strengthen parental capacity, as it can have a major impact on the child’s wellbeing as a number of factors affect parenting capacity, which makes it difficult for parents to address the needs of their child and require support (Walker 2008). Therefore, partnership is significant as agencies can determine what support they might need and help struggling parents, it is also easier for parents to access appropriate service from the relevant agencies which saves time (Foley and Rixon 2014). It also reduces parental anxieties by being in partnership as they are aware of what is going on and are able to express any concerns with a key worker, rather than having to go through many assessments with various professionals which can be very stressful (Dominelli 2009). In addition, family partnership is important to guarantee that young people’s welfare is safeguarded regardless of where they are (Tassoni et al. 2010), and family members know what might be helpful for children,

Partnership in interagency working can be attained through the use of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), the CAF aims to create a single shared image of what is functioning well in a child’s life and where support is useful, this image is built by bringing together information assembled through discussions with the child, their family and relevant practitioners working together (CWDC 2010). This image is then used to plan a way forward and can have a successful impact in improving the lives of the children ().This shows the importance of partnership of children and families as they are empowered to engage and take responsibility for their contribution, which results in them feeling that they have control over what has improved (CWDC