The responsibility to safeguard vulnerable residents lies with councils and a range of safeguarding partners, but too often vulnerability is identified too late. Limited data co-ordination between organisations makes it hard not only to identify people who need support before they hit a crisis, but also to understand whether they are known to other safeguarding agencies and the wider safeguarding landscape.
Prevention is critical to improve safeguarding and we know that data needs to be more effectively shared across agencies if we are to better protect vulnerable people and reduce the potential of people falling into the social care system. This is a big challenge.
This webinar explores the latest learnings from a powerful project, backed by the LGA and NHS Digital, to link data across adult services, children’s services, public health, the NHS, Police and Fire and Rescue Services.
Guest speakers:
- Jane Hancer, Partnership Director, CC2i
- Chris Frey-Davies, PO Safeguarding: Adult and Child Services and Quality Assurance, Neath Port Talbot Council
View the webinar
The annual report found that too often, different safeguarding agencies are holding different pieces of the same puzzle through their interactions with families, adults, and children, but are unable to piece those parts of the puzzle together effectively in certain cases. The lack of information sharing between these partners is, therefore, unfortunately, regularly cited as a contributing or key factor in those situations.
The bedrock of all of this is information sharing. Headline data is really critical and all the partners collect name, date of birth and NHS number. So there's no case data in MAST, but we're able to match on the key data elements. For example, if police were called out two nights ago, or someone missed a hospital appointment, which helps practitioners to understand what is the next question to ask and who they need to contact.
MAST is a breath of fresh air for us. For decades, we’ve tried to solve the information sharing conundrum by focusing on policies and procedures, with endless documents reminding us how we should be sharing information. The real solution lies in how people interact with systems. MAST is a step in the right direction and we are looking to onboard more agencies and explore its potential as a pan Wales digital solution.
This quote from a social worker really sums up MAST: Ultimately for me and my colleagues, this will be a game changer. So often we do not know about things that have happened with our families. Sometimes schools are told, sometimes schools then tell us, sometimes no one knows for weeks. Not only would this save us time and effort, but it would allow us to make much better decisions for our priorities and interact better across the system.