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Related content

• Common Assessment Framework (CAF)
• Frequently asked questions: Key workers and keyworking
• Key worker training
• Lead professional
• What families say about Early Support

What is keyworking?

Keyworking helps families use the network of services around them efficiently.

Lead professionals or key workers act as a single point of contact when parents and carers are looking for information and can reduce stress by encouraging everyone who is in contact with a family to work better together as a group. Where families are juggling many appointments and meetings, they may also be able to help by co-ordinating visits to hospitals and clinics.

'Keyworking', 'care co-ordination', 'Team Around the Child' (TAC) and 'key worker' services are all approaches to improving the way that services are 'joined up'. They aim to achieve better co-ordinated packages of help and advice and to keep parents and carers at the heart of discussion and decision-making about their child. This is particularly important when a lot of different services and people are involved.

Keyworking is not a separate, 'add on' service but a core component of working in partnership with families and integrated service provision. It is a natural extension to the work that many practitioners already do with families with children.

Keyworking improves outcomes for families and children by viewing service provision from the perspective of the people who use services and making best use of the resources available. It's a mechanism to help service providers:

• work together
• understand a family's strengths and weaknesses
• co-ordinate the way that information and help are provided
• work with families over time to negotiate shared priorities and agree the range of support that is needed.

What key workers and lead professionals do

Key workers and lead professionals act as a single point of contact for children and families. The core responsibility of people taking on the role is to co-ordinate the package of support for a child and family.

Lead professionals and key workers are needed when a range of different people and services are in contact with a family.

The  Practitioners' Guide for Lead Professionals published by the Children's Workforce Development Council in 2007 says:

"Lead Professional is not a job title or a new role, but a set of functions to be carried out as part of the delivery of effective integrated support."

These functions are to:

• Act as a single point of contact for the child and family, who they can trust and who can engage them in making choices, navigating their way through the system and effecting change.
• Co-ordinate the delivery of actions agreed by the practitioners involved, to ensure that children and families receive an effective service, which is regularly reviewed. These actions will be based on the outcome of assessments and recorded in a plan.
• Reduce overlap and inconsistency in the services received.

Care Co-ordination Network UK has published a set of standards to support the development of Keyworking.

Why Keyworking is needed?

Lead professionals and key workers are needed because co-ordination of services is a problem for families with disabled children.

When appointments, contacts and service provision are not co-ordinated, parents talk about:

• the frustration of having to tell the same story over and over again to different people
• a battle to find out about the help that is available
• difficulty understanding what different professionals do and understanding how different services relate to one another
• difficulty getting professionals to think about their family situation as a whole
• delays and difficulty getting referred to other services
• inconsistent messages from different professionals
• inconsistent patterns of contact and support, with some services overlapping
• a lack of shared goals
• wasted time
• increased stress.

Key workers and lead professionals - what's in a name?

'Lead professional' is the generic term used in current Government guidance to describe a person who acts as a single point of contact for families and who helps to co-ordinate service provision. Within wider service provision for families, children and young people, lead professionals are normally identified at the time that the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is used to alert services to the need for a multi-agency response and a joint planning process.

Where the nature of a child's disability means that a family uses many different services, they are likely to need more support, and over a longer period of time than other people. This is not only because of the increased number and range of services that families interact with - it's also linked to the emotional needs of the individuals involved. Parents and carers often need:

• time to talk, as understanding of their child's situation builds up over time
• continuity of contact, so they can establish a relationship with the professionals they see most often
• information, paced over time and in response to changes in their child's situation
• help to understand information in relation to their own child
• emotional support and someone to talk to who understands their situation.

People who provide this more intense, 'lead professional plus' service for families with disabled children are often called key workers. They cover the core functions of a lead professional as part of the broader service they provide. As the Practitioners' and manager's guides for lead professionals and managers produced by the Children's Workforce Development Council in 2007 makes clear:

'Key Worker models are increasingly in place for children with severe and complex disabilities or health needs, as recommended by the Children's NSF. Where the child or family have a Key Worker, they are the Lead Professional.' 
 

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Last updated on 20/08/2009