The collective safeguarding responsibility model: The 12Cs: Development, evidence base and potential application

Multi-agency (also referred to as inter-professional/inter-agency) collaboration is viewed as an imperative way of working to prevent and protect people from harm. The operationalization of multi-agency safeguarding, including the implementation of legislation and guidance, varies widely and there remain areas of ongoing learning in multi-agency safeguarding enactment. In addition to understanding the facilitators of collaborative safeguarding, we must also have tools to evaluate and scrutinize these arrangements, to maximize our effectiveness. This article follows on from a previous article (Ball et al., 2024a) and introduces the collective safeguarding responsibility model: the 12Cs. The 12Cs provides a unique, evidence-based, holistic framework that can demonstrate how safeguarding arrangements are working strategically and operationally, across and within organizations. The framework focuses on the role of practitioners and agencies in responding to safeguarding concerns, and crucially, the framework incorporates understanding the perspectives of those with lived experiences of receiving safeguarding support. The 12Cs can provide both a local and national understanding of what we have in place regarding multi-agency safeguarding. It also explores how this works, whether it is effective and what action is required to improve responses going forward. The multi-agency safeguarding landscape is a dynamic space, and as such, we must be able to continually assess and be assured of our safeguarding effectiveness to provide a robust evidence base to inform future practice.