Public service professionals in the fields of children’s social care, health, education, police, housing and youth offending wanted to make sure that they provided adequate support to vulnerable children and young adults. They believed that it is best to share information about cases that are dealt with by more than one department, to ensure that their interventions are complementary to each other and not opposing or repetitive.
To do so, the agencies formed a Multi-agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) to collect and share information when receiving referrals. Each member of the MASH signed up to an information sharing agreement which, amongst other things, set out the types of information they would share between members. The information-sharing agreement was consistent with the GDPR.# Adapted from: