Rates of section 47 investigations higher in multi-agency safeguarding hubs areas, but MASHs not associated with lower rates of child deaths or serious harm, concludes research, prompting questions about government reforms.
Multi-agency safeguarding hubs (MASHs) are associated with increased numbers of child protection investigations, but not with improved outcomes for children, a study has found.
The creation of MASHs was accompanied by increases in rates of child protection investigations, under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, when compared with areas without hubs.
However, this did not translate into MASH areas having significantly increased rates of children on child protection plans or having lower rates of child deaths or serious harm, the research concluded.
According to the authors, the study poses serious questions about the government’s establishment of multi-agency child protection teams, which are designed to improve the quality of safeguarding practice, as part of its current social care reforms.
About the study
The research, published in the British Journal of Social Work, was led by Andy Bilson, emeritus professor of social work at the University of Lancashire, and was co-authored by Matthew Jay, of University College London, and social work academic Simon Haworth.
It was based on freedom of information requests to all 153 English local authorities about whether and when they established a MASH, for which the authors received 130 usable responses, 124 from councils with a MASH.
This was then combined with Department for Education (DfE) data on the number and rates of section 47 enquiries and child protection plans, from 2009-10 to 2023-24, and on the number of serious incident notifications by councils, from 2018-21. Councils are required to notify the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel if a child it knows or suspects has been abused or neglected dies or is seriously harmed in its area, where such a child who is normally resident in its area dies or is seriously harmed outside of England, or when a looked-after child dies.
The spike in the number of child protection investigations
Across the period studied, the number of annual section 47 enquiries in England rose substantially, from 89,300 in 2009-10 to 224,520 in 2023-24.
This 151.4% increase significantly outstripped the 40.2% rise in the number of new child protection plans made annually, which rose from 44,300 to 62,110 over the same period.
As a result, the proportion of children placed on a plan following a section 47 enquiry fell from 50% in 2009-10 to 28% in 2023-24, while the number of investigations that did not result in a plan each year rose by a factor of 3.6 over the period.
The authors said rising numbers of investigations placed heavy demands on social workers, many of whom already had high caseloads, while also harming families, including by making parents feel judged or punished.
Investigation trends following launch of MASHs
The 124 local authorities with MASHs established these between 2011 and 2024, with three-quarters of hubs (93) set up from 2014-18.
The authors compared the percentage change in the rate of child protection investigations per 10,000 children in the year before and after the creation of a MASH, with the trends in areas without a MASH in the same years.
This identified that the increase in the section 47 rate was higher in areas that implemented a MASH in nine out of the 12 years studied, with the only exceptions being 2011, 2012 and 2020, when non-MASH areas saw a greater rise.
The authors conducted the same exercise in relation to changes in the rates of child protection plans (CPPs) per 10,000 children, and found no clear pattern. In some years, MASH authorities saw substantially larger increases in plan rates, but in others the growth was similar to or smaller than in non-MASH areas.
“Taken together, these findings indicate that MASH implementation is associated with an increase in decisions to initiate investigations, but without a consistent or proportional rise in CPPs,” the study concluded.
MASHs associated with more s47 enquiries over longer term
The association between having a MASH and having higher rates of section 47 enquiries was also apparent when looked at over a longer term, the authors found.
To assess this, they compared child protection investigation rates in areas that had had a MASH in place for at least a year with those for areas that had not established a MASH until at least a year after the comparison period.
From 2015 onwards, local authorities with a MASH consistently recorded higher rates of investigation than those without, and this gap widened over time. In 2023, the average rate of investigations in MASH authorities was 194.1 per 10,000 children, compared with 108.5 in non-MASH areas.
There was a much smaller gap between MASH and non-MASH areas in relation to CPP rates: in 2023, MASH authorities recorded a CPP rate of 54.5 per 10,000, compared with 38.8 per 10,000 for non-MASH authorities.
“This suggests that while MASHs intensify investigative activity, they do not appear to significantly alter decision making about which children require formal child protection planning,” the study found.
These associations held when the authors calculated the rates of section 47 enquiries and child protection plans relative to the number of children in relative poverty in each area. The rates of section 47 enquiries were significantly higher in MASH areas than non-MASH areas from 2015 onwards – with the exception of 2018 – and there was much less of a difference in relation to CPP rates.
The authors said this suggested that the overall differences were not due to MASH areas having higher rates of children in low-income families, a factor positively associated with child protection interventions.
Serious incident notifications data
The research also found that rates of serious incident notifications did not differ significantly between MASH and non-MASH areas. Comparing data from 2018-21 between councils that had a MASH before 2018 and those that did not have one during this period, the authors found that there were:
- 12 serious incident notifications per 100,000 children in MASH areas, compared with 11.2 in non-MASH areas.
- 70.3 serious incident notifications per 100,000 children in poverty in MASH areas, compared with 69 in non-MASH areas.
- 359 serious incident notifications per 100,000 children in need in MASH areas, compared with 417 in non-MASH areas.
“The findings show little evidence that MASH implementation reduced the likelihood of serious harm or death due to abuse or neglect,” said the study.
MASHs ‘contributing to family intrusion and work pressures’
The authors acknowledged that, as an observational study, the research could only establish associations between MASH implementation and outcomes, not causal relationships. Other factors, such as local policy changes, resource levels, inspection regimes or demographic variation, could also explain differences between areas, they added.
However, notwithstanding that, they concluded: “Despite substantial investment, MASHs appear to intensify investigations without delivering better outcomes for children. There is no indication that they reduce serious harm or child deaths. Instead, this study suggests they contribute to widening intrusion into family life, consume scarce professional resources, and contribute to workforce pressures.”
The report added: “Investigations themselves can harm children and families, while the opportunity cost of maintaining MASH structures and the increasing investigative response diverts resources from preventative, family-strengthening services.”
Establishment of multi-agency child protection teams
The research comes with councils and their partners establishing multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs) to support the delivery of authorities’ section 47 duties, as required by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.
The idea for the reform came from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s 2022 report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson, in which the panel envisaged that the teams would help tackle deficits in information sharing and multi-agency working.
Echoing this, the Department for Education sees MACPTs’ role as “to strengthen expert decision making where children may be experiencing or likely to experience significant harm”.
The Department for Education (DfE) is consulting, until 4 September, on policy underpinning regulations on the operation of MACPTs, alongside other child protection reforms. The DfE is proposing that MACPTs take responsibility for, among other things:
- determining whether the significant harm threshold has been met;
- convening and chairing strategy meetings;
- leading or overseeing multi-agency investigations (as required);
- convening and chairing child protection conferences;
- overseeing the development and delivery of child protection plans, and keeping them under review.
‘Serious questions’ about DfE reforms
Bilson said the MASH research “raises serious questions about the evidence for extending similar models nationally”, in a reference to the roll out of MACPTs.
“We should not give MACPTs wide powers over child protection unless there is evidence that it makes children safer and impacts on fewer families,” he added.
He has set up a webpage calling on people to respond to the current consultation by urging the government to:
- Make sure families asking for help get support, not suspicion, with poverty, disability, housing problems and other pressures treated as needs for support, not parental risk.
- Give children and families a real say in decisions that affect them.
- Protect disabled children and their families from parent blame.
- Measure whether child protection actually reduces harm, not just how many investigations happen.
- Not expand information sharing between services until there is evidence that it makes children safer.
Alongside the creation of MACPTs, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act has also legislated to require bodies including councils, integrated care boards and police forces to disclose safeguarding information to one another in specified circumstances.
Do multi-agency safeguarding hubs improve child protection outcomes? Evidence from national administrative data was published in the British Journal of Social Work on 26 August 2026.
Source: Community Care
