Child Safeguarding

Every year in England, nearly 400,000 children are formally recognised as being “in need” of children’s social care support (equivalent to about 1 in every 30 children) [1]. Of those, over 100,000 children are subject to Child in Need (CIN) plans [2] and many more may be at risk but fall outside formal services. Decades of reviews and case studies show that poor information sharing between agencies is a recurring contributing factor in serious harm and death of children - when professionals hold only fragments of a child’s case history, decision-making is weakened [3]. 

By consolidating data across health, social care and other agencies into a unified, up-to-date view, professionals can better match, verify and act on safeguarding alerts - ensuring that no child slips through the cracks just because their records live in silos.
By bringing together records from across care systems, every professional has a single, current view of a child’s safeguarding status. This enables earlier intervention, safer decisions and targeted support in the right places.

The challenge

• Children may be coded as vulnerable (Child in Need or Child Protection) across multiple systems, but not all professionals can see the relevant alerts.
• Records need to be compared and reconciled across health and social care, so everyone understands a child’s current status.
• System-wide insight is required to highlight localities and practices with higher prevalence for additional, targeted support.

Our solution

• Use the breadth of data in the Shared Care Record to compare safeguarding alerts and confirm each child’s current status alongside key context.
• Provide Patient Identifiable Reports to General Practice so teams can quickly identify children subject to Child in Need or Child Protection Plans and correct coding where discrepancies exist - supporting effective case management and safer care.
• Mirror this approach in Social Care, where up-to-date primary care codes can inform local safeguarding work.
• Supply anonymised, population-level views for ICB safeguarding teams and Named GPs to spot patterns and focus resources where they are most needed.
• Deliver the solution at system level for complete coverage and consistent application, with data refreshed every 24 hours.

Impact and benefits

• A single, trusted view helps General Practice, Social Care and other agencies identify and support children on Child in Need and Child Protection Plans.
•  Named GPs can collaborate with social care, child protection conference chairs and wider professionals using the most current, matching data - enabling multi-agency safeguarding at locality level.
• Current information (updated every 24 hours) improves confidence in decisions and reduces risk.
• Flexible views at any level of granularity (system, place, neighbourhood, practice) surface areas with higher rates for targeted intervention.
• Consistent, system-wide deployment ensures every eligible professional who needs to can access the reports and act quickly.

What you get

• Shared Care Record–driven reconciliation of safeguarding alerts
• Role-appropriate access to Patient Identifiable Reports
• Anonymised population health dashboards for pattern detection
• Consistent, system-wide deployment and daily refresh

Talk to us today

Sources

[1] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-in-need/2024
[2] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/children-in-need/2024 
[3] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64d500285cac65000dc2dd91/Improving_multi-agency_information_sharing_2023.pdf