Socialheads
Multi-agency working,
from the young person's side
Young people rarely belong to one organisation at a time. Here is what that looks like when the software is built for it.
One person, several services, at the same time
Multi-agency working is the ordinary state of care leaving, youth work, mental health and education. A young person can hold a relationship with a local authority team, a commissioned provider and a charity all at once, and each is right to keep its own record.
Most software assumes the opposite. A person belongs to one organisation, so serving them from two means two accounts, two logins, two apps on a phone that may not be theirs, and a young person doing the administrative work of the system they are inside.
An illustrative scenario
Illustrative, not a real deployment. Jess is invented, and neither organisation in the story is a real customer, a real service, or based on one.
Where it starts
Jess is nineteen and has left care. Her local authority's leaving care service invites her to join. The invite reaches her by text, she types in the code it carries, and she is in, messaging her personal adviser. That thread is where the practical stuff lives: a housing appointment, a form she cannot make sense of, a bad week.
Months later, a second organisation
A charity crisis service starts working with her too. They invite her the same way, to their own service, and she accepts with a code sent to the same number she already uses. She does not create a second account, download a second app, or explain who she is again.
What each organisation sees, and what it does not
Its own service, its own record of Jess, its own conversations, and its own audit trail. The local authority does not see that a charity is also working with her, and the charity does not see that a local authority record exists. Someone trying to look across gets nothing back, and nothing that tells them there was something to find.
What makes that possible
Two decisions, taken early, because retrofitting either one is close to impossible.
Identity is one thing, membership is another
A person is one identity, signed in once. What each organisation grants them is a separate membership, carrying its own record. Adding the second one does not touch the first.
Separation is in the structure, not in a filter
A cross-organisation attempt returns nothing, and each organisation's audit trail holds only its own events. It is a boundary rather than a setting somebody has to remember.
Accountable access, inside each organisation
Isolation between organisations settles who cannot look. Inside one organisation, the answer is the same on both sides of this story.
Only the people in a conversation can read it, and any other access needs a recorded reason your service can see.
So if Jess ever asks either organisation who has read her messages, there is a record that answers her. How safeguarding works sets out that model step by step.
Why this matters to the young person
A care leaver already carries a lot of the coordination between the services around her. She repeats her story, chases people, and holds the map of who does what in her own head.
Handing her a separate app per agency puts the joining-up on her. Pooling everything into one shared view takes the choice away from her entirely, and means a thing she said to one worker turns up somewhere she never sent it. This sits between the two: one login, so the burden is small, and separate records, so what she tells one service is what she told one service.
The relationship also lives in an account rather than in a number saved on a worker's phone. She can open it in a web browser on any device, with the iPhone and Android apps on their way, which is what keeps her reachable in a lean month: no app store account, no card, and a library computer is enough.
Where the line sits today
- It is not a shared multi-agency view. The two organisations do not get a joint record, a joint dashboard, or sight of each other. That is the point of the design rather than a gap in it.
- It does not share information between agencies. That decision belongs to each agency under its own duties, and we are careful not to make it easier by making it invisible. What a worker chooses to share, they share deliberately.
- It is not a case management system. It holds the conversation and the record of it, not assessments, plans or statutory records. Where Socialheads fits is the longer answer.
- Each organisation is its own controller. We act as processor for each of them, separately, and never as a bridge between them.
- Threads with an external professional are a further step, and we are not putting a date on it. Bringing someone from outside your organisation into a conversation, such as a teacher, a GP or a court guardian, is a separate piece of work, and we would rather say that plainly than name a month.
Where this sits in the product
Most services start with the staff group, because that is where the largest exposure already is. Messaging with the people you support is the second step, and it is where the scenario on this page lives.
Core
From £3,000 a year
A safe alternative to WhatsApp for your staff team chats, owned by the service rather than by everyone's personal handset.
Safeguarding Plus
From £7,500 a year
Adds messaging between your staff and the people you support, with the record, the oversight model and the per-organisation separation described here.
Plans and pricing sets out how your figure is worked out.
If your young people are already known to more than one service, bring us that shape and we will walk it on real screens rather than slides. Tell us your timescale and we will work it out with you.