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
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
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