Although nationally the term ‘lead professional’ is used, and locally we have also used the term ‘main contact’ we have agreed to use the term lead practitioner.
What should the lead practitioner do?
The purpose of the lead practitioner function is to have one practitioner taking a lead role to ensure that services are coordinated, coherent and achieve intended outcomes.
The functions are:
- To act as a single point of contact for the child or family
- To co-ordinate the delivery of actions agreed by involved practitioners
- To reduce overlap and inconsistency in the services received
What should the lead practitioner not do?
It is not the responsibility of the lead practitioner to do all the work or carry out functions that other services would normally do. Other practitioners involved with the family must take responsibility to feed information to the lead practitioner on a regular basis.
How should the lead practitioner be selected?
A number of factors must come in to play. The lead practitioner
- Can be most effectively identified by the team around the family.
- Could be drawn from any of the people currently involved with the child or young person
- Could be from statutory or voluntary sector
- Should be practitioner most relevant to the child or young person’s action plan
- Should be practitioner with most appropriate skills
- Not necessarily the first practitioner involved with child or young person
- Not necessarily practitioner who carried out the common assessment
- Should take into account the views of the family
- Should consider the capacity of the individual practitioners
