What Is Multi-Agency Working? A Guide for UK Charities and Practitioners

TL;DR: Multi-agency working is the practice of different organisations — charities, local authorities, NHS trusts, police, schools, and others — collaborating to support individuals with complex or overlapping needs. In safeguarding, it is a statutory requirement. Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 sets binding expectations on how agencies must work together to protect children in England. Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs (MASH) are the primary mechanism for joining up early identification and response. Effective collaboration depends on clear information sharing agreements, shared training, and compatible case recording systems.

Why Multi-Agency Working Exists

No single organisation holds the full picture of a person's life. A family experiencing domestic abuse may simultaneously be known to children's social care, a GP surgery, a housing provider, and a domestic abuse charity. A young person at risk of county lines exploitation may have contact with school pastoral staff, youth workers, and the police. When each of those agencies works in isolation, risks go undetected and support is duplicated or falls through the gaps.

Multi-agency working addresses this by creating formal frameworks for sharing information, making joint decisions, and coordinating action. The logic is straightforward: the more complete the picture, the more proportionate and timely the response.

In England, the statutory foundation for multi-agency working with children is Working Together to Safeguard Children, which was updated in December 2023. The 2023 guidance strengthens expectations across the whole system — from early help through to child protection — and introduces new national multi-agency child protection standards that set out specific actions, considerations, and behaviours for practitioners (GOV.UK, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023). It also gives formal recognition to the role of education settings — schools, colleges, and early years providers — as partners in safeguarding, not just referrers.

For adults, the equivalent duty sits in the Care Act 2014, which requires local authorities to establish Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs) and work cooperatively with NHS bodies, the police, and other agencies.

Stat: In 2023–24, the number of safeguarding enquiries for which Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) information was provided rose to 146,995 — an 8% increase on the previous year (NHS England, Safeguarding Adults, England, 2023–24).

Charities occupy an important position in this system. Because they are often trusted by the communities statutory agencies find hardest to reach, they can act as a bridge — surfacing concerns, advocating for families, and providing specialist support. To do this effectively, they need to understand what the system requires of them, and how to work within it.

How MASH Works: Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs

The Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) is the most widely used model for joining up early safeguarding responses in England. A MASH brings practitioners from different agencies — typically children's social care, police, health, education, and probation — into a single, co-located (or virtually linked) team. When a referral comes in, each agency checks its own records and shares relevant information within the hub, producing a richer picture than any single agency could assemble alone.

The key benefit is speed. Rather than sending sequential requests across organisational boundaries, a MASH allows simultaneous checks and a rapid joint decision about the appropriate level of response. This is particularly important where a child may be at immediate risk, or where threshold decisions require input from multiple professional perspectives.

A survey of 114 local authorities in England found that 106 — more than 93% — reported having a MASH in operation (UCL Institute of Education / Foundations, Evaluation of Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs, 2025). This reflects how central the model has become since it first emerged around 2010.

MASH is not without challenges. Research conducted for the Department for Education found that many professionals outside MASH teams remained unfamiliar with its processes, which sometimes led to reluctance to share information when requested (UCL Institute of Education, Evaluation of Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hubs, 2024). This highlights why training, clear referral pathways, and relationship-building between agencies matter as much as formal structures.

Stat: Councils in England carried out 225,400 section 47 child protection enquiries in 2022–23, up 3.5% on the previous year. In 2022–23, around a third of those enquiries (74,380) resulted in an initial child protection conference (DfE, Children in Need, 2023).

Charities that regularly make referrals to MASH — or receive referrals from it — need to understand the process and be prepared to share information lawfully. Plinth's Case Management feature allows practitioners to maintain structured records and produce summaries suitable for sharing within multi-agency processes, with a full audit trail that supports accountability.

Information Sharing: The Legal and Practical Framework

Information sharing is both the engine of multi-agency working and its most contested aspect. Practitioners across all agencies frequently cite concern about data protection law as a reason for not sharing — but research consistently finds that these concerns are often based on misunderstanding rather than genuine legal barriers.

The Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023 guidance is explicit: the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR do not prevent the sharing of information for safeguarding purposes. Where there is a legal gateway — such as a section 47 enquiry, a risk to life, or a public task — practitioners have a clear basis to share. The guidance states that the safety and welfare of the child must be the primary consideration, and that in most circumstances this outweighs the duty to maintain confidentiality (GOV.UK, Improving Multi-Agency Information Sharing, 2023).

In practice, agencies are expected to have written information sharing agreements that set out what data can be shared, with whom, under what conditions, and how it will be stored and destroyed. For charities working within multi-agency partnerships, having a signed data sharing protocol with the local authority is an important step.

Research identifies three broad categories of barrier to effective information sharing: knowledge and culture (practitioners not understanding what they are permitted to share), perceived legislative and regulatory barriers (overstating the restrictions of GDPR), and technological barriers (incompatible systems, outdated platforms, and poor interoperability) (Social Finance, Overcoming Behavioural and Cultural Barriers to Multi-Agency Information Sharing). All three are addressable, but they require investment in training, relationship-building, and infrastructure.

Stat: A survey of professionals from 102 of the 137 Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships (LSCPs) in England found that more than 80% agreed their partnership promoted a culture of multi-agency learning from experience without blame, and that there was a shared understanding of the local safeguarding context (DfE, Safeguarding Partners Yearly Reports Analysis, 2023–24).

Charities working across multiple boroughs, or co-ordinating referrals from several statutory partners, benefit from CRM tools designed for the sector. Plinth's Partner CRM helps organisations manage relationships with local authority contacts, track referral agreements, and maintain a clear record of inter-agency activity.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which agencies are required to take part in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements?

Under Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023, the three statutory safeguarding partners in each local area are the local authority, the Integrated Care Board (ICB), and the chief officer of police. These three bodies are jointly responsible for establishing, maintaining, and publishing local safeguarding arrangements. They are also required to engage a wider set of relevant agencies — including education, probation, youth justice, housing, and the voluntary sector — in the work of the partnership. Charities delivering services to children and families are expected to cooperate with local arrangements, even though they are not statutory partners themselves (GOV.UK, Working Together to Safeguard Children 2023).

Can charities share information with statutory agencies without breaching GDPR?

Yes, in most circumstances relevant to safeguarding. UK GDPR contains several lawful bases for processing personal data, including legitimate interests, compliance with a legal obligation, and tasks carried out in the public interest. Where there is a risk to the life or safety of a child or adult at risk, charities may share information without consent — and in some circumstances they must. Charities should have a data sharing agreement in place with their statutory partners, and their own privacy notices should be transparent about how information may be shared. The information sharing for charities guide covers this in more detail.

What is the difference between a MASH and a Safeguarding Children Partnership?

A Safeguarding Children Partnership (SCP) — formerly a Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) — is the strategic multi-agency governance structure responsible for coordinating and quality-assuring safeguarding across a local area. It is led by the three statutory partners (local authority, ICB, and police). A MASH is an operational mechanism: it is where practitioners from different agencies work together on a day-to-day basis to triage referrals and make joint decisions about individual cases. The SCP sets the policy and learning framework; the MASH delivers the frontline response.

Recommended Next Pages

• What Is Safeguarding?
• Information Sharing for Charities
• What Is Early Intervention?
• Software for Children's Charities

Published by the Plinth Team. Last updated 21 February 2026.