Strengthening Child Protection: Sharing Information in Multi-Agency Settings

In the wake of official reviews of a number of high-profile deaths of at-risk children in the United Kingdom, the topic of information sharing among social service agencies and staff has become both a political and a moral imperative. But while the concept is easy—information should be shared widely among agencies—the practice is much more complex, involving complications ranging from interagency cooperation to the need to protect privacy. This book steers a course through those problems, offering a close analysis of how information sharing can and should work to help social workers build a full picture of a child’s life—and thereby help to safeguard and improve it.