Integrated Working - Information for Practitioners

What is Integrated Working?

Integrated Working is where everyone supporting children, young people and families works together effectively to put them at the centre, meet their needs and improve their lives.

By combining their professional expertise, knowledge and skills and involving the child or young person and family throughout, practitioners can identify needs earlier, deliver a co-ordinated package of support that is centred on the child or young person, and help secure better outcomes for them.

The elements of Integrated Working

Integrated Working is supported by three key processes:

1. The Common Assessment Framework (CAF)
   A framework to help practitioners working with children, young people and families to assess children and young people’s additional needs for earlier, and more effective services, and develop a common understanding of those needs and how to work together to meet them.
2. The Lead Professional
   The person responsible for co-ordinating the actions identified in the assessment process; a single point of contact for children and young people with additional needs, supported by more than one practitioner in a Team Around the Child (TAC).
3. Information Sharing
   Helping practitioners work together more effectively to meet children and young people’s needs through sharing information.

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Factsheets and Guidance Documents

In the attached files section below, you can find introductory factsheets and full guidance documents on each of these processes, plus a set of Haringey CAF forms and annexes. The documents incorporate the relevant national guidance and also include the detail on how these processes work in Haringey. So, if you want to find out more about how the CAF works, or you have been invited to a TAC meeting and want to know what to expect - this is the place to start.

Also included below as part of the ‘suite’ of Integrated Working guidance are the Haringey Thresholds of Need and Service Responses. This document aims to assist practitioners and managers in assessing and identifying a child’s level of need, what type of services/resources may meet those needs and what processes to follow in moving from an assessment to a provision of services.

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Attached Files