Summary

This evaluation analyses the success of Child Wellbeing Units (CWU) at helping identify children at risk and manage work flows for the Child Protection Helpline. Child Wellbeing Units were established under the Keeping Them Safe reforms in order to help manage the number of calls to the Child Protection Helpline and to triage risk to children concerns. They were established in three main agencies: Police, Health and Education. Evaluators used call records, data recorded in the CWU databases (WellNet), surveys, interviews and case studies to evaluate how well CWUs were being implemented. They found that CWUs have been successful at lowering the workload for the Helpline, creating cultures of reporting of risks to children within agencies and giving advice, information and training to mandatory reporters within agencies.