Unit 5 D2 Health And Social Care Study

Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults and Promoting Independence – D2

For this assignment I will be evaluating the role of multi-agency working in reducing the risk of abuse to adults.
Multi-agency working is the care planning process and single assessment process which encourages greater inter-agency working together, with the service user’s needs being central to the process. This is where professionals from different agencies combine their skills and expertise to meet the holistic needs of the service user. (Billingham, Stretch and Whitehouse, 2007)
Along with everything, there are many advantages and disadvantages with the multi-agency working. McCoy believed that Multi-agency working is a more responsive approach, as clients may be able to
People are more prepared to make bolder decisions as the responsibility and accountability are shared.
Multi-agency working is believed to be more efficient, that service users will get an increased quality of service. There is more constructive cooperation, everyone shares their knowledge, skills and expertise. This means that someone may have a better approach due to better knowledge of the subject, it is not to say that your approach is wrong, however, just how to make your approach better for the service user. For example; a drug counsellor would have better knowledge on how to deal with a person’s drug problem better than a social worker.
However, when working in a multi-agency team the more professional group can often take over the team, what they says goes because they feel that they are more superior. Also a Multi-agency meeting can be time consuming. It can often be difficult to have all professions that are working in the team together at the same time. What suits one team member, may not suit another team
Baby Peter’s mother had disclosed to authorities that her boyfriend was now living with them; however nobody ever investigated into his background. (Mail Online, 2010). Multi Agency should have come into play here, the agencies who were involved in this case should have done more investigating into those who were living with the child, backgrounds. This may have prevented the death of Baby P. ‘The mother’s boyfriend had previously been questioned by police on suspicion of torturing his grandmother’ (Mail Online, 2010). If the correct procedures had been followed then this should have given authorities a case for concern, and perhaps prevented any further abuse happening to Baby Peter.
This information should have been shared between each member of the multi-agency team, and he should have been looked into. The multi-agency team that was working with Baby Peter did not work together as a team, which in turn gave a negative outcome as a child lost his