The Early Help Strategy talks about identifying vulnerable families early and working together across agencies to support children and families. In order to further strengthen multi-agency working and early identification of families, practitioners are able to flag a concern.
‘Flagging a concern’ enables services to speak to the MASH Early Help Coordinators and add a note to the system to indicate that your service holds a piece of information about that child or family. You can 'flag' if you have a non-safeguarding concern about a child. Consent from the family will not be required; no details of the concern will be recorded. Each ‘flag’ will prompt a review of the child’s circumstances by the Local Area Team and as a minimum standard, follow up action will be taken if three flags are logged.
You do not need consent to add a flag to the system, but best practice is to discuss any issues with the parents or carers first, and we would always encourage you to do so.
When flagging a concern, you will be asked to confirm the following:
Where a young person’s record has multiple flags, the Local Area Team will put the practitioners who flagged a concern in touch with each other. This is so that they can discuss their concerns and identify whether a young person or family are in need of further support.
If you would like to flag a concern, contact the MASH Early Help Coordinators on 01904 551900, option 2. Please note, the team do not accept flags by email, you will need to call and speak to a member of the team in order to flag a concern.