Thinking and working together to safeguard children.

This section discusses the papers featured in volume 8 of "Child Abuse Review" in 2001 and the Guidance "Working Together to Safeguard Children," published in 1999, which seeks to reinforce the principles that the responsibility for promoting the well-being of children and protecting them from harm must be shared across all agencies and professional groups in Great Britain. The aim of the guidance is to provide a national framework upon which local child protection procedures should be built. It stresses the links with social exclusion, domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse. This document also takes into account measures to prevent unsuitable people from working with children which are to be introduced in the Protection of Children Act 1999. Guidance is provided on investigating allegations of abuse by professionals, carers and volunteers, in children's homes for example, and considers perpetrators who act alone or in organized groups. The paper by Egan-Sage and Carpenter looks at a large number of referrals to a Social Service Department in the early 1990s. The second paper looks at the differences in Multidisciplinary working in Great Britain and New Jersey.