The Executive Summary

It’s certainly been a busy start to the year! As ever, there’s been lots going on, but I’d like to focus on two key items that underpin everything that we do as a partnership.

The first is Working Together 2023. This new legislation came into effect in December and replaces Working Together 2018. It is imperative that everyone understands the changes that have been made and how they affect your role. 

To facilitate this, in January we delivered three multi-agency briefings to over 600 practitioners. If you missed this briefing, or would like to share the resources and PowerPoint slides with your colleagues, the Working Together briefing resources are available on SharePoint.

The second area of work to highlight is the Partnership Health Check. Health Check discussions with our multi-agency partners took place on 1 February. The conclusions will help us to explore how we can improve as a partnership, as well as identifying what the barriers to these improvements are.

"We need to break down the boundaries between our organisations and get to know our colleagues from across the Partnership that bit better"

We need to implement the Working Together changes by December 2024, so the Health Check was the perfect opportunity to explore where we excel and where we need to do better.

We are working with our Department of Education consultant, Deborah McMillan, to finalise our findings, but it was clear that, while we’ve made good progress, there is still more to do.

Our aim is to build a better partnership model that has restorative practice and empowerment at its core. One that breaks down the boundaries between our organisations and encourages getting to know, and working more closely with, colleagues across the Partnership. This will help us to create an effective system that enables us to get things right from the first instance, rather than getting bogged down in reactive firefighting.

We will update you with more details of the outcome of the Health Check and next steps as soon as we can.

Did you know that FearFree of free specialist advice to help individuals change their behaviour and have healthier relationships?

The Behaviour Change service is a ‘whole family’ holistic approach to supporting the non-abusive parent, abusive parent and their children. The service is for individuals who are concerned about their own use of abusive behaviour in their relationships, but as part of this it also works to support their partners and children.

The aim is to get individuals to fully understand how their behaviour impacts the rest of their family, and in doing so it creates the foundations for healthy relationships moving forward. 

This is a voluntary programme and FearFree cannot engage with clients who are engaged in the judicial process or who have recent convictions for domestic abuse.

Practitioners can make a referral online using the Behaviour Change referral form. Alternatively, individuals can self refer via the FearFree website, or by calling 0345 155 1074.