Key updates

The ‘Working together to safeguard children’ (DfE, 2026) statutory guidance provides an outline of the legal roles and responsibilities of individuals, organisations and agencies to support effective multi-agency working to help protect and promote the welfare of all children. It applies to all organisations and agencies that provide services/functions involving children (directly or indirectly) and all education and childcare providers within the UK.

The statutory guidance consists of six chapters, and key changes have been made within five of them. Most of the changes focuses around making the existing guidance clearer by clarifying specific terms and including additional facts and references. It has also been made explicit that the guidance applies to all children, including;

• Those living with their birth or extended family.
• Those in kinship care, including special guardianship.
• Adopted and looked‑after children in foster or residential settings.

Furthermore, the guidance additionally makes it clear that all practitioners should also give consideration to unborn children where there are potential concerns and to seek help, support and protection for them. In terms of more specific updates within individual chapters of the guidance, below is a summary of each of them;

Chapter 1: A shared responsibility

This chapter highlights the importance of safeguarding children being everybody’s responsibility and a shared one. It highlights the importance of working in partnership with parents/families and all professionals with a child-centred approach. The latest update has reinforced expectations on managers and leaders to create inclusive, anti‑discriminatory cultures. Furthermore, it has reinforced that practitioners are expected to challenge racism and discrimination and put strategies in place to reduce the potential for racism and discrimination to occur. It has additionally strengthened guidance on more specific 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.

Chapter 2: Multi-agency safeguarding arrangements (MASA)

This chapter of the guidance highlights the importance of working together in and across multi-agencies to protect children from abuse, neglect and exploitation. All organisations, agencies and educational providers working with children, must have robust arrangements in place to clearly outline how they will work together with other organisations and agencies. The latest updates to this chapter of the guidance have clarified that;

• MASA responsibilities include children who are looked after and now include clearer detail on accountability structures and how safeguarding partners are inspected.

And clearer expectations have been set surrounding the use of;

• analysing information to identify disproportionality and racism and strengthened requirements for data sharing.

Furthermore, it has been made explicit that;

• Annual reports must evidence their impact on children and families.

Chapter 3: Providing help, support and protection

This chapter of the guidance outlines how organisations, agencies, educational providers and individuals should work together to provide help, support and protection for families at the earliest point possible through early intervention. The latest updates made within this chapter includes strengthening;

• Expectations for anti‑racist and anti‑discriminatory practice, including recognising how racism and past experiences influence relationships.
• Child sexual abuse procedures and the use of family group decision‑making should be implemented where possible.
• Robust multi‑agency assessments, which must include direct work with the child and strategy discussions for child sexual abuse.
• Guidance to emphasise that safeguarding and child protection applies to all children, and any assessments and planning should link to existing family help plans or care planning where appropriate. 

Furthermore, this chapter now also includes;

• Additional content which covers domestic abuse, child sexual abuse, infants abuse and honour or faith or belief‑based abuse.
• New references address online harms and group‑based exploitation.
• Reinforced statements that recognise that children may face multiple harms simultaneously.

Chapter 4: Organisational responsibilities

This chapter of the guidance outlines the legal duties of a range of organisations and agencies working with children and their families to promote the welfare of children and ensure that they are protected from harm. The updates made within this chapter recognises and clarifies;

• The vulnerability of looked after children in certain settings.
• Reinforces the link between care planning and child protection planning.
• A stronger emphasis on the local authority’s duty to ensure support and protection through the care plan and highlighted risks such as sexual exploitation.
• The chapter now also includes a new paragraph which addresses the risks in residential settings for children.

Chapter 5: Learning from serious child safeguarding incidents

This chapter recognises that when good practice surrounding safeguarding is effective and organisations, agencies and educational providers work together it can reduce the potential for serious incidents to happen. It is important to reflect on what is working well to continue to strengthen good practice. However, unfortunately sometimes things still go seriously wrong, and it is vital that when they do, reflection and learning from them should always take place. This is to identify were policies and procedures may have broken down or to identify any areas within them that were insufficient in a particular incident. It is through this learning that can help reduce the risk of the same or similar incident from happening again. Considering the importance of learning from serious child safeguarding incidents, this chapter has been re-structured and strengthened to ensure that;

• Safeguarding partners have a better understanding of how and when to make timely, accurate and comprehensive notifications and engage in the learning process.
• Safeguarding partners should know how to notify the death of a care leaver up to and including the age of 24.

The chapter now also;

• 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.
• 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.
• Sets out the expectations for learning from incidents that do not meet notification criteria and notes that rapid reviews may be shared with government in exceptional cases.

Furthermore, the updates also confirms that;

• Only theChild 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. This also includes an update to the timeline of the rapid review to a requirement that it is submitted within 15 working days of the SIN.

A note of safeguarding young children with SEND

Although all young children are considered to be vulnerable within a safeguarding context, young children with SEND are considered even more vulnerable as there are increased risks of abuse, neglect and exploitation. This is due to children with SEND often being more reliant on adults to meet their intimate/personal and daily care needs and can more easily be isolated from others. Children with SEND may also have additional communication needs, and a more limited understanding of what abuse is and what is happening to them. Often children with SEND have several professionals and agencies working with them and this is where the importance of multi-agency working is essential.

In addition to the ‘working together to safeguard children’ guidance (DfE, 2026), practitioners working with children with SEND should also be aware of and follow other statutory guidance’s to ensure the safeguarding of children with SEND. This includes the Equality Act (2010), the Children and Families Act (2014) and the SEND Code of Practice (DfE/DoH, 2015). Furthermore, when organisations, agencies and educational providers are recruiting staff to work with young children (with and without SEND), within educational settings, they should ensure they follow the statutory guidance, ‘keeping children safe in Education’ (DfE, 2025). This will help to ensure that only suitable people are recruited to work with children. For children with SEND, further consideration should be given to the suitability of a person to work with them as they often have more specific needs. (Links to all these Acts and statutory guidance’s can be found at the end of this article).

Conclusion

It continues to remain everyone’s responsibility to safeguard young children and there are statutory guidance’s in place to help to ensure that everyone working with children and their families know what their legal roles and responsibilities are. This article only provides a summary of the key changes made within the latest version of the ‘working together to safeguard children’ guidance (DfE, 2026), as interpreted by myself. It does not cover the wider contents of the guidance and therefore, this article is not a replacement for you reading and familiarising yourself with the full version of the guidance. It is intended as a snapshot to make you aware that some changes have been made and reiterate that it is your legal responsibility to adhere to and implement them within your practice. It can be challenging to read policy changes as they are published due to time constraints when you are already working with children and families, so this article aimed to provide you with what you need to know now, with the recommendation to refer to the full guidance as soon as it is practically possible.

Drawing this article to a conclusion, I want to strongly reiterate that if you have any concerns regarding the safeguarding of a child, always follow your settings/providers safeguarding policies and procedures and report your concerns to the appropriate people who can action them. One of the biggest failures in safeguarding children and often the primary recommendation in serious case reviews is a lack of communication and information sharing. If you have concerns about a child, it is vital that you share them with your designated safeguarding lead within your own organisation or setting and where appropriate with other agencies. You may feel that a piece of information that you hold is minor or even irrelevant, however when that information is shared with other professionals, who may also be holding key information, when put together it can paint a very vivid picture of a child who could be at a significant risk of harm. Therefore, always report and share information if you feel there is a potential safeguarding concern.

Links

‘Working together to safeguard children’ (DfE, 2026): Working together to safeguard children 2026: a guide to multi-agency working to help, protect and promote the welfare of children

‘Keeping children safe in Education’ (DfE, 2025): Keeping children safe in education 2025

The SEND code of practice (DfE/DoH, 2015). SEND_Code_of_Practice_January_2015.pdf

The Equality Act (2010): Equality Act 2010

 The Children and Families Act (2014): Children and Families Act 2014