Multi-agency child protection teams (MACPT)
What is a Multi- Agency Child Protection Team (MACPT)?
An MACPT is a specialist team made up of professionals from different agencies (e.g. social care, police, health, education) who work together to make decisions and take action to protect children at risk of significant harm.
MACPTs will lead child protection decision making and functions and will work closely with Family Help teams to ensure support is brought around the child and family in one integrated system. New, expert social worker Lead Child Protection Practitioners (LCPPs), embedded within MACPTs, will make child protection decisions drawing on the expertise and knowledge of the wider multi-agency practitioners in the team. LCPPs will need to have significant frontline child protection knowledge and skills. See the
Lead Child Protection Practitioner Standards issued in June 2026.
MACPTs will need to:
• act as a centre of excellence for the wider system on child protection concerns
• convene and lead strategy meetings
• lead section 47 enquiries
• convene and chair child protection conferences and forums;
• lead the development, implementation and closure of child protection plans;
• keep child protection plans under review;
• provide consultation and advice for practitioners who need MACPT expertise;
• maintain an understanding of patterns of significant harm in the local area and agency responses; and
• consider and set out the MACPT’s role in supporting transitions out of child protection (including pre- and court proceedings, reunification and into wider
services.