 Lead Professional
The Lead Professional plays a key role in the provision of joined-up or integrated support. They do this by:
- Taking the lead to coordinate provision
- Acting as a single point of contact for a child and their family, and the rest of the team feeding into the Lead Professional
- Ensuring services are well planned, delivered and reviewed, by liaising with the Team Around the Child (TAC) on a regular basis, leading on the Child & Family Plan, and ensuring, as far as possible, that time-scales for delivery of the plan is kept.
- Reducing overlap and duplication - by listening to the views of the team, and leading on issues that are pertinent to the plan.
What Difference Will this Make for Achools?
Schools in the past may have felt out of the loop when trying to deal with issues within the school that they know are being dealt with by other agencies. In these new arrangements, all agencies and professionals relevant to the child and young person will be kept informed about the work in progress by the Lead Professional.
Who in Schools can be a Lead Professional?
Anyone who has experience of working with other agencies could take a lead. It can depend on the nature of the presenting issues and the confidence and capacity of individuals in being able to take on the work. In some cases this has been the SENCO, CSF Pupil Support Workers, Teacher Assistants, or some schools have developed Family Liaison roles, which fits well with this work. Other people within education that have been Lead Professionals are – Directors of Curriculum, Connexions and Education Welfare.
The decision to appoint a Lead Professional will come from all the practitioners working with the child, as part of the ‘TAC’ process. This decision will also take into account the wishes of the child and the family.
Case Study
At a Team Around the Child Meeting it was suggested that the School Nurse should be the Lead Professional, as the young man’s main presenting issue was his worsening asthma. The child in question, however, requested that the Teacher Assistant that he was already working with be the lead, as he knew her very well. The Teacher Assistant agreed to the role of Lead Professional providing the School Nurse communicated with her on a regular basis, which the School Nurse was happy to agree to. The Teacher Assistant was also able to liaise with the Form Tutor, the CSF Pupil Support Worker (who was working with him on range of issues) and the parents.
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