Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes. This definition clearly places safeguarding in the realm of health care providers, and even more clearly in the defined role of child-centred public health staff (i.e. school health teams). However, the guidance is heavily focused on legislation and implementing legislation; and as such describes the lead role of the local authority (LA) children’s social worker and social work team. While the processes and protocols to be followed are to be locally developed and defined, a minimum standards set applies to all of these policies and procedures, outlining clearly who will do what, when and why—and how this activity will be monitored and measured. There is a defined expectation that a local authority children’s social worker must make a decision about the type of response required from any referral, and provide a response to the referrer within 1 working day of the referral being received. Children’s social workers are a relatively small group (in 2010 there were 19 975 full time equivalent social workers,