What Is Multi Agency Working

“Multi-agency working brings together practitioners from different sectors and professions to provide an integrated way of working to support children, young people and families.” (Multi- agency working, 2013) The key for multi- agency working is to bring practitioners together from different sectors to work in an integrated way, which ensures that people who need additional support have the right professionals to support them. Multi- agency working can involve anyone whose job puts them into contact with the service user and should have a range of specialist skills. Multi- agency working involves having multi- agency meetings. “These meetings are in place to provide an opportunity for children, families and practitioners to discuss how needs
identified in the Common Assessment can be scheduled and met.” (NSPCC, 2011). The main reason for these meetings is to share common assessment information so that it can be analysed. Sharing information at these meetings must have the consent of the family and child that you are expecting to share information about.
In my opinion the benefits for taking this approach are:
Early identification and intervention
Easy and quick access to expertise
Better support for carers
Needs are addressed appropriately
Better quality services
Early identification and intervention is a benefit for taking this approach because if a situation is identified as quickly as possible then a process to stop this happening can proceed and then intervention can start taking place to stop the situation from getting worse. Easy and quick access to expertise is a benefit for taking this approach because if you have a situation arise with a certain individual and expertise is needed then having a multi- agency team would provide any
person with specialist skills which may be required whilst working with an individual. For example if a child who had a multi- agency team working with them needed quick advice of someone who specialised in the area needed for the advice then the multi- agency team would be able to provide that for them. Better support for carers would benefit a multi- agency team because although a multi- agency team is in place to help a certain individual it can also help a service provider for that individual as they would be a part of the multi- agency team as well. As one of the challenges with multi- agency working is not having time to build good quality relationships, having better support for carers will help this relationship to form better. Having an individual’s needs addressed appropriately is a benefit because it can lead to early identification of other situations and can help with preventing new situations happening. It is also likely to help gain a better relationship with the individual. Better quality services is a benefit for taking this approach because the better quality you have of something the longer it is likely to last and the longer an individual is likely to use it for. If you have a bad quality service then the service user is less likely to use it again and will not take into consideration what you are saying.
Using the benefit ‘early identification and intervention’ I am going to explain how this approach works and say why I am considering it to be a successful approach.
In my opinion I believe that early intervention is about services using and integrated approach in order to prevent problems occurring or escalating. “To develop Early Intervention Services in Dorset a number of co-location bases have been created with facilities available to a range of professionals.” (Dorset for you, 2013). The key purpose of early intervention is to improve outcomes for children, young people and families by analysing their needs and determining the best way to meet those needs. I think that this is a successful approach because identifying a problem early with a child, young person or family will help to get the right people who have the right expertise involved so the early intervention can begin to improve the situation and can meet their needs appropriately. I also consider this to be a successful approach because it is used in all different situations. For example on the ‘Herefordshire safeguarding children’s board’ online they have an early identification of misuse of substances while pregnant. On the website it states that “Early intervention and support in place for the extended family may prevent family breakdown and enable support for children.” (Herefordshire safeguarding children board, 2010) This shows that early intervention is
successful in many different situations and can help in long term and short term.

References:
1. Department for education. (2013). Multi- Agency working. Available: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130903161358/http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/strategy/integratedworking/a0069013/multi-agency-working. Last accessed 17th April 2014.
2. NSPCC. (2011). What should you expect from a multi- agency meeting. Available: http://www.safenetwork.org.uk/training_and_awareness/Pages/multi-agency-meeting.aspx. Last accessed 17th April 2014.
3. Dorset for you . (2013). early intervention process . Available: http://www.dorsetforyou.com/media.jsp?mediaid=167046&filetype=pdf. Last accessed 17th April 2014.
4. Herefordshire safeguarding children board. (2010). Interventions for women and their babies. Available: http://hscb.herefordshire.gov.uk/docs/15._POLICY_MA_assesspregnant_substance_misuse_FIN AL.pdf. Last accessed 17th April 2014.