Protected: Partners in South Wales use MAST to transform safeguarding by connecting data

Information sharing has been a central issue in child protection and adult safeguarding practice, highlighted by numerous historical reviews and recommendations over the past fifty years. Without visibility of how individuals interact with different safeguarding agencies, practitioners have struggled to act proactively with speed or confidence.

Safeguarding agencies in South Wales found that despite their best efforts to share information, when children and adults in vulnerable situations interacted with one safeguarding agency, often another safeguarding agency was left unaware. This was leading to missed opportunities for earlier intervention, and difficulty in understanding the full picture of the lives of the children and adults they were supporting.

They decided that automated information sharing and the intelligent use of data use would help them to identify need much earlier, preventing crisis and stopping people falling through the cracks.

In October 2024, five partners across South Wales launched the Multi Agency Safeguarding Tracker (MAST). Developed by Policy in Practice, MAST brings together headline data on over 1m interactions across social care, health, police and fire services.

MAST reveals whether someone is known to partner services, encouraging multi-agency collaboration while respecting data privacy. It enables a holistic view to better inform safeguarding decisions, and saves hours of practitioner time.

Within MAST, we find that

• 5% of people have more than five interactions with services in a given year
• 15% of addresses have more than five interactions with services in a given year
• 75 users logged into MAST three times each week on average, running over 1,360 searches in one week

The following impact stories, based on real examples, show how MAST saves time when carrying out lateral checks, lowers the duplication of effort across agencies and leads to a faster and more informed safeguarding response.

An unknown child was brought to the attention of a social worker, who used MAST to identify the name of the child, and her siblings, along with multiple interactions with health services over the past twelve months. A quick follow up confirmed these details were correct, enabling a core assessment to better determine the nature and level of risk of harm. 12 hours saved across two partners.

A referral was made to children’s social care for child neglect. MAST identified that Aiden’s mother was known to adult social services, with an open case relating to physical needs. This put the concerns for Aiden into context. Faye was offered support and help with personal care and domestic tasks, and Aiden was recognised as a young carer. 4 hours and over £1,000 saved in referral costs.

A mental health practitioner contacted the NHS in relation to domestic abuse and wider safeguarding concerns. Using MAST, the health trust was able to see that a 5 year-old child lived in the same address and had missed multiple hospital appointments. “Without MAST, we would not have seen the connection between the adult and child, or even known to ask”

These impact stories show how MAST saves time when carrying out lateral checks, lowers the duplication of effort across agencies and leads to a faster and more informed safeguarding response. The South Wales MAST evaluation report includes the detail behind these anonymised but real examples.

• Data sharing saves lives: Decades of safeguarding reviews highlight that better information sharing could have prevented serious harm
• MAST enables a joined up view: By integrating headline data from social care, health, police and fire services, MAST helps practitioners see the full safeguarding picture
• Practical, privacy conscious collaboration: MAST balances data privacy with effective multi agency coordination, promoting shared responsibility without overexposing data
• Tangible financial and human impact: MAST has saved an estimated £2 million across partners per year and enabled child identification and rapid response, with time savings worth £300 per referral.  It has prevented multiple high cost interventions through earlier action and avoiding annual placement costs of around £130,000 per local authority
• Scalable and future ready: With plans to include education, mental health and probation data, MAST is a scalable model ready to transform safeguarding across the UK

Further impact stories can be found in the report. These delivered additional savings through early triage, accelerated information gathering, identification of hotspots for targeted early intervention and more.