Who will lead professionals work with?
Lead professionals will work with children and young people with a range of 'additional needs' who require support from more than one practitioner.
Children with additional needs is a broad term that refers to those children and young people whose experiences and characteristics may affect their capacity to thrive, and who require additional support in order to achieve their potential.
The needs of the majority of these children and young people will be able to be met through the intervention of practitioners working with universal services. However, for a significant minority, their needs are such that they require an integrated package of support. These children will require a lead professional to coordinate the support they receive.
In addition, some children and young people have more significant needs and
meet the threshold for support from specialist or statutory services. These
children and young people are often defined as having significant or severe and
complex needs.
Children with more significant or complex needs may include children in need,
for example looked after children, children whose names are on child protection
registers, disabled children, children who have statements of special
educational needs (SEN) and those involved with youth offending teams
(Yots).
These children will already have a designated practitioner with a legal
responsibiltiy to fulfil their statutory requirements towards them. In some
cases, this may include a responsibility to ensure that the support is
effectively coordinated where more than one practitioner is involved.
In practice, this may mean that the lead professional role may be different for those children with more complex needs who require integrated support. Therefore, during 2005-6 we will be working with an expert group of practitioners to review the implementation of the lead professional role for children with more complex and ongoing needs.
Our aim is to produce further guidance on the lead professional for children and young people with more complex needs by Spring 2006.
This page was last updated on 29 June 2005
