RCGP Safeguarding toolkit

What does ‘information sharing’ in a safeguarding context mean?

Sharing information in a safeguarding context means sharing relevant personal information about children and adults that multi-disciplinary and multi-agency professionals and agencies hold. The information is shared in order to safeguard children and adults from abuse and neglect.

Information can be shared in a variety of ways such as: safeguarding referrals, safeguarding reports, letters, emails, clinical IT systems, verbal discussions and multi-agency processes such as multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARAC), muti-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA) or public protection arrangements Northern Ireland (PPANI).

Information sharing can range from documenting safeguarding concerns in a patient record, to seeking advice from a practice safeguarding lead, to providing a detailed report for the purposes of a safeguarding conference.

The information that general practice can provide can be very wide-ranging. Further detail on relevant information that general practice can provide can be found in Part 3 of the RCGP safeguarding toolkit in the sections: ‘Top tips for making a child safeguarding referral and writing safeguarding reports’ and ‘Top tips for making an adult safeguarding referral and writing safeguarding reports’.