Skill Profile
Multi-Agency Working
"Sharing information and coordinating actions with professionals from other organisations (police, health, education, social care) to manage a shared case safely."
YOUR SKILLS
Problems This Skill Solves
- Critical information about a family or individual sitting unshared across separate agency systems
- Duplicated or contradictory interventions from different services confusing the person being supported
- Risk being missed because no single agency held the full picture
- Delays in protective action caused by unclear responsibility between agencies
Multi-agency working means one agency takes over the case.
It means agencies retain their own role but coordinate so no gap or duplication in support occurs.
Data protection rules prevent agencies from sharing safeguarding information.
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act explicitly permit information-sharing where it is necessary to protect someone from harm.
Research & Outlook
Shared digital case records across health, police and social care are slowly expanding, but interoperability between different councils' IT systems remains a practical bottleneck.
See This Skill In Action
Watch a professional demonstrate Multi-Agency Working in a real working environment — what it looks like, how it's applied, and why it matters.
Social Care / Partnership Working
Multi-Agency Working
Also Known As
Growth Path
Knows which partner agencies to contact and follows the correct referral pathway.
Actively contributes case information and risk assessment in multi-agency meetings and follows through on agreed actions.
Chairs multi-agency meetings, resolves disagreements about risk level or responsibility, and improves local information-sharing protocols.
How to Practise
- 1.Sit in on a real or simulated multi-agency meeting (e.g. MARAC, TAC) to observe information-sharing protocol
- 2.Practise writing a case summary that gives another agency exactly what they need without breaching confidentiality boundaries
- 3.Learn the referral thresholds and pathways of the two or three agencies you work alongside most often
- 4.Complete inter-agency information-sharing training (e.g. based on the Caldicott Principles)
How to Prove
- ·Minutes or case notes showing your contribution to a multi-agency meeting
- ·A reference from a partner agency confirming effective joint working on a case
- ·Completion of recognised multi-agency or information-sharing training