Working Together to Safeguard Children is the statutory guidance underpinning multi-agency safeguarding in England. The 2026 edition brings the most significant structural changes in years — including Family Help, new duties around care-experienced children, and tightened expectations on elective home education. Schools need to understand it alongside, not instead of, KCSIE 2026.
⚠️ Statutory guidance, in force from 18 March 2026
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 was published on 18 March 2026 and is the current statutory guidance for multi-agency safeguarding in England. This article reflects the published text. Always refer to the official version on GOV.UK before updating live policy.
Working Together to Safeguard Children and Keeping Children Safe in Education sit alongside each other in the English safeguarding system — one is not a subset of the other. KCSIE tells schools what they must do internally; Working Together tells everyone — schools, social care, police, health, the voluntary sector — how they must work together. Both are statutory. Both apply to schools. And the 2026 editions arrived within months of each other.
Where the two overlap, they reinforce the same direction. The Family Help model introduced in Working Together 2026, for instance, is specifically referenced in KCSIE 2026 when it describes how schools engage with external support. Understanding Working Together is not an optional extra for DSLs — it is the legal framework governing every multi-agency referral your school makes.
At a glance: the key changes in Working Together 2026
| Area | Change |
|---|---|
| Family Help | Merges Early Help and Section 17 into a single multi-agency pathway |
| Kinship care | Strengthened expectations for pre-birth planning and specific vulnerable groups |
| Care leaver notification | New duty to notify LA when a care leaver up to age 24 dies |
| Elective home education | 5-day notification duty when a child is removed from roll outside standard transitions |
The most substantial structural change in Working Together 2026 is the introduction of Family Help as a single pathway replacing what were previously two distinct offers: targeted early help and Section 17 support under the Children Act 1989.
Under the new model, families whose needs exceed universal services but fall below the child protection threshold receive co-ordinated, multi-disciplinary support through a single Family Help team, with one named lead practitioner responsible for the family's plan. The intention is to stop families being passed between services — early help here, a Section 17 assessment there, referrals bouncing between agencies — and to create a more coherent, responsive offer.
What this means for schools in practice
Your MASH referral and early-help escalation routes remain, but the language and structure of what happens next is changing. When you refer a family for support below the child protection threshold, that support will increasingly be framed as a Family Help offer. Know your local Family Help pathway, find out which team to contact, and update your own internal processes and staff briefings accordingly.
The terminology change also has an internal implication. If your staff training, policy documents or referral forms still use "Early Help" and "Section 17" as distinct and parallel concepts, they need updating. The guidance is clear that these are now a unified offer, and families will experience them as such. This aligns with the direction already signalled in KCSIE 2026, which references Family Help when describing how schools engage with external multi-agency support.
Working Together 2026 strengthens expectations around several groups of children who are known to face heightened vulnerability. Schools will encounter these children regularly and have a specific role in ensuring they are visible to the right agencies.
Children in kinship care
Children living with grandparents, aunts, uncles or family friends — often informally, outside any formal fostering arrangement — are at higher risk precisely because their circumstances are less visible to agencies. Working Together 2026 raises expectations on agencies to identify and engage with kinship arrangements proactively, and schools are a key point of visibility. If a child's living arrangements change and they move to a relative or family friend, that is worth noting and following up.
Pre-birth planning and vulnerable expectant parents
The guidance strengthens expectations on pre-birth risk assessment and planning for families where concerns are identified before a child is born. For secondary schools and sixth forms with pregnant pupils or students, this is a live issue. The school has a role in ensuring that a young person who is pregnant and known to be in a vulnerable situation is connected to the right early-intervention support.
Children in residential and foster care
Working Together 2026 sets out strengthened expectations for children in residential care and for children who are adopted, with greater emphasis on the multi-agency team's responsibility to maintain active oversight rather than treating placement as a resolution. For schools, this means being an active participant in reviews, not a passive recipient of information.
Working Together 2026 introduces a new duty on local authorities to be notified when a care leaver aged up to 24 dies. This sits within a broader strengthening of responsibilities towards care-experienced young people, who face significantly worse outcomes across health, housing, education and employment than their peers.
For most schools, this will not be a front-line operational requirement — schools are not the primary agency responsible for care leavers after they leave roll. However, it matters for several reasons. If your school has contact with former pupils who were care leavers — through alumni programmes, sixth-form provision or FE partnerships — you may become aware of a death before the local authority does. In that situation, notifying the relevant leaving care team promptly is the right course of action. More broadly, this duty signals a direction of travel: care-experienced people are a group whose outcomes must be tracked and improved, not forgotten once they leave the education system.
Working Together 2026 introduces a clear expectation that schools must notify the local authority within five days when a child is removed from the school roll at a non-standard transition point. This is not a new power — schools have always been able to share information with the LA — but it is now framed as an explicit duty, and crucially it includes the expectation that schools share any relevant safeguarding knowledge at the same time, not just the administrative fact of deregistration.
This matters because elective home education has historically been a visibility gap. Once a child leaves the school roll, there is no automatic mechanism to ensure they are known to anyone. Working Together 2026 changes that by requiring schools to act as a handover point rather than simply closing the file.
The duty connects to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which includes proposals for a national register of children not in school. Under those proposals, the local authority would be required to add the child to that register when notified by the school. The national register has not yet come into force, but practitioners are already expected to ensure the local authority's elective home education team is consulted in any strategy discussion or multi-agency assessment involving a child who has recently left roll.
For the full picture on what the notification should contain, warning signs that warrant closer attention, and what happens next, see our detailed guide: Elective Home Education and Safeguarding: What DSLs Need to Know in 2026. For wider attendance and missing-from-education duties, see our Attendance and Safeguarding page.
Working Together 2026 came into force in March 2026, so this is not a future obligation — it applies now. These are the actions that will make the most practical difference:
✓ Bottom line for DSLs
Working Together 2026 and KCSIE 2026 together represent the most comprehensive update to the statutory safeguarding framework in years. Neither replaces the other. DSLs who understand both — and have briefed their staff, governors and local partners on both — will be operating from a position of compliance and confidence when the autumn term begins.
No. They are two separate statutory frameworks that sit alongside each other. KCSIE 2026 (Keeping Children Safe in Education) is school-specific guidance produced by the Department for Education. It sets out what schools and colleges must do to keep children safe. Working Together 2026 is multi-agency guidance that applies to all practitioners and agencies working with children — including schools, but also social care, health, police and the voluntary sector. It governs how those agencies must work together. Both are statutory. Both apply to schools in England. Where they overlap, they reinforce each other.
Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 was published on 18 March 2026 and is the current statutory guidance. It replaced the 2023 edition on publication. If your school's safeguarding policy, referral documentation or staff training materials still reference Working Together 2023, they should be updated now.
Yes. Working Together to Safeguard Children applies to all schools and colleges in England, including independent schools, academies, free schools and further education colleges. The duty to work within a multi-agency safeguarding framework and to share information appropriately applies regardless of school type. Independent schools and colleges should ensure their safeguarding policies reflect the 2026 edition and that their staff understand the updated multi-agency referral pathways, including the Family Help model.
📚 Statutory References
Sources
[1] HM Government / Department for Education (2026). Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026. GOV.UK. Published 18 March 2026.
[2] Department for Education (2026). Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026. GOV.UK. Published July 2026, in force 1 September 2026.
[3] Children Act 1989. legislation.gov.uk.
[4] Children Act 2004. legislation.gov.uk.
This article has been reviewed against the published Working Together 2026 text and does not constitute legal advice. Always refer to the official version on GOV.UK before updating live policy. Last reviewed: August 2026.