Working Together to Safeguard Children: Key Points and Changes

Safeguarding is most effective when everyone works together to achieve excellent outcomes. If your role involves regular interaction with children, you must be familiar with the statutory guidance around safeguarding – a key piece of which is Working Together to Safeguard Children. This explains how to achieve best practice when working with children in various settings. When implemented effectively, it can help you to ensure robust safeguarding, with the welfare of children at the forefront of everything you do.

In this article, we will discuss the key elements of Working Together to Safeguard Children, covering some changes that came into effect in March 2026. 

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What is Working Together to Safeguard Children (WTSC)?

Working Together to Safeguard Children (WTSC) provides statutory guidance for settings where work and activities relate to children. The guidance is issued by law, meaning time must be taken to understand and follow it. It is particularly relevant for settings where interactions with children are frequent, such as education and childcare providers (including the likes of sports and church groups), social services and local authorities. WTSC sits amongst other guidance and legislation, which you can read more about in our article here.

First introduced in 1999, Working Together to Safeguard Children has received various updates. Perhaps the most notable one was in 2006 as a result of the public inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbie. Victoria was transported to the UK by her Great Aunt, and following her death, it was discovered that Victoria had reached out to various agencies seeking help for the abuse she was suffering. The guidance was redrafted to address the mistakes which Victoria’s situation had highlighted.

Since then, it has been updated every few years. Each time, an overall aim is to strengthen how different agencies and organisations work together to achieve the best safeguarding arrangements for children. 

WTSC recognises that safeguarding is most effective when everyone involved works together collaboratively. The guidance highlights the importance of multi-agency working and outlines the value of involving the whole family in the process, including the child. Additionally, the guidance aims to clarify the roles and responsibilities of those working with children in various settings so that everyone knows how to keep the children in their care safe. 

The guidance is for anyone who interacts with children as part of their role or for any organisation whose functions relate to children in any way. A full list of sectors that must follow the guidance and remain informed of any updates or changes can be found here.

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Working Together to Safeguard Children: Key Points

The most recent version of the guidance is split into chapters which cover the following topics:

Chapter 1: A shared responsibility

Reinforced expectations on leaders to create inclusive, anti?discriminatory cultures and that practitioners are expected to challenge racism and discrimination.

There’s also strengthened guidance on certain types of harm such as:

• abusive behaviour in intimate relationships
• coercive control
• more hidden harms such as child sexual abuse (CSA) and teenage relationship abuse

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Chapter 2: Multi-agency safeguarding arrangements

• Clarified that MASA responsibilities include children who are looked after. Clearer detail has also been provided on accountability structures and how safeguarding partners are inspected.
• Clearer expectations have been set on analysing information to identify disproportionality and racism and strengthened requirements for data sharing.
• The chapter makes explicit that annual reports must evidence their impact on children and families.

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Chapter 3: Providing help, support and protection

• The chapter explains that family help combines targeted early help and section 17 support to create a more seamless offer for families, with consistent practitioner relationships and a family help plan led by a multi?disciplinary team.
• Expectations for anti-racist and anti-discriminatory practice have been strengthened, recognising how racism and past experiences influence relationships.
• Additional content covers domestic abuse, child sexual abuse, infants abuse and honour or faith or belief-based abuse, with strengthened child sexual abuse procedures and the use of family group decision?making.
• New references address online harms and group-based exploitation. This section reinforces that children may face multiple harms simultaneously.
• Section 47 has strengthened expectations for robust multi-agency assessments, direct work with the child and strategy discussions for child sexual abuse.
• Guidance to emphasise that safeguarding and child protection apply to all children has been strengthened, and any assessments and planning should link to existing family help plans or care planning where appropriate.

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Chapter 4: Organisational responsibilities

• This chapter clarifies the vulnerability of looked after children in certain settings and reinforces the link between care planning and child protection planning.
• The local authority’s duty has been emphasised to ensure support and protection through the care plan and highlighted risks such as sexual exploitation. A new paragraph addresses risks in residential settings.

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Chapter 5: Learning from serious child safeguarding incidents

• This section has been re-structured and strengthened to ensure safeguarding partners better understand how and when to make timely, accurate and comprehensive notifications and engage in the learning process.
• It sets out that notifications must be made, even if the names of child victims are not yet known. It states that all children should be included in the notification and the wider context should also be considered.
• It also clarifies how to notify the death of a care leaver up to and including the age of 24 and provides guidance on notifying adults aged 18 or over where harm, abuse or neglect occurred in childhood but not reported or known at that time.
• The revised text confirms that only the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel decides on National Reviews and outlines the sequence from serious incident notification (SIN) to rapid review to local child safeguarding practice review.
• It also sets expectations for learning from incidents that do not meet notification criteria and notes that rapid reviews may be shared with the government in exceptional cases.
• The rapid review timeline has been updated to require submission within 15 working days of the SIN.

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Chapter 6: Child death reviews

No changes made.

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Appendix A: glossary

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Appendix B

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You can access the full 2026 guidance here.

The Department for Education also released a useful summary of changes, as we have referred to throughout this article, linked here.

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If your role involves working with children in any capacity, safeguarding must be at the forefront of your mind and following statutory guidance is essential. Confidence in your roles and responsibilities will allow you to carry out your duties effectively, ensuring the children in your care and their families feel safe and supported.

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Further Resources:

• Safeguarding Checklist for Schools
• Keeping Children Safe in Education: Key Changes
• Safeguarding Scenarios and Answers for Education
• Safeguarding Children in Education Quiz
• Work Experience Guidance for Schools: Do I Need a Young Person’s Risk Assessment?
• Safeguarding Courses