Multi-agency services: what skills and training will I need?
Organisational and cultural change can have major implications for practitioners, for example the need to work across professional boundaries, with new concepts and new terminology. There are skills and training that can help you adjust to these demands, and these can be developed through three main routes (see below for more information):
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Your personal development
The Common Core of Skills and Knowledge for the Children's Workforce defines a set of skills and knowledge associated with multi-agency working.
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Team training opportunities
Focusing on team building to help people from different backgrounds understand each other and work effectively together.
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Professional development opportunities
Increasingly there will be opportunities open to you as a member of the children's workforce.
Common Core
The Common Core of Skills and Knowledge of the Children's Workforce sets out the areas of expertise that everyone working with children, young people and families (including those who work as volunteers) should be able to demonstrate. These are grouped into six areas:
- Effective communication and engagement with children, young people and
families
- Child and young person development
- Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of the child
- Supporting transitions
- Multi-agency working
- Sharing information
Training on integrated working processes and tools
The work of multi-agency services will be supported by key integrated working processes and tools, ie information sharing, the Common Assessment Framework and the lead professional. Staff working in multi-agency services will therefore require priority training in these areas.
Click here to read more about integrated working or to access guidance and training materials on information sharing, Common Assessment Framework and the lead professional role.
Training opportunities
When you join a multi-agency team, panel or service, you are likely to have the opportunity to take part in a number of training events. These can help you to understand the context for the work, and help you integrate with colleagues and forge a sense of team identity. Key opportunities are induction and team training events.
Induction
A good induction programme offers you the opportunity to get to know a wide range of aspects of the business. It will have been carefully planned by your managers, and may be supported by an induction pack which will document which aspects of the work you have been introduced to, and which people you have met.
Typically, it will include:
- Time with the line manager
- Time with colleagues to discuss what they do
- HR topics to be covered (eg workplace policies, learning and
development)
- Systems and processes
- Opportunity to work shadow
- Other topics which are relevant to the work of the service and which you need to know about, but which you might not be directly involved in, for example working with Jobcentre Plus or working with primary schools
It may even include the opportunity to do a placement or to work shadow with a partner agency to understand more about how they work.
A good programme will offer the opportunity for you to reflect on your progress during the induction period with your line manager. This could run in conjunction with regular supervision meetings.
Team building
Training and development can take a number of forms, and achieve a range of objectives. It can be focused on team building, with the aim of tackling some of the cultural barriers and challenges facing people who come together to work in a multi-agency team.
It can also be more skills-focused, with the aim of cascading information and developing new areas of work, for example different approaches to working with children and young people; family support or recording and information sharing.
Team building opportunities can be formal or informal, for example:
- Team meetings
- Team lunches
- Team away days
- A regular slot once or twice a year where all practitioners get together
for a few days for a set programme of training which they have agreed
upon
- Opportunities to do specialist training, which you then cascade to colleagues
The precise balance of training will reflect the needs of everyone in the service and the availability of local training.
Professional development opportunities
A new single qualifications framework is being developed to help people progress more easily in their chosen roles and support their retention in the children's workforce.
It will build on the Common Core and is a method of modernising the sector and creating a workforce which is flexible and fluid. It will ultimately enable those working in one sector to develop in their individual roles and move easily to other sectors within the children's workforce. The impact of this will be that individuals will be able to train to any given level to fit their precise needs and help improve recruitment and retention rates within the sector.
Click to read more about the government's proposals for workforce reform, including the Children's Workforce Strategy.
This page was last updated on 20 September 2006
