Anna Freud

As the name suggests, integrated care is a coordinated approach to supporting the needs of young people - where professionals from across sectors, whether justice, education, health or social care, come together to facilitate a joined-up approach to understanding and addressing a young person’s needs. It is a particularly important approach for those young people in complicated circumstances, who might have multiple intersecting needs that would ordinarily fall across professionals in different sectors. Integrated care represents a shift in ideology - away from trying to “fix” individuals in isolation and towards creating a coherent, supportive, and young person centred system that can safety hold complexity overtime and ensure young people received the joined-up support they need.

Integrated care gives young people more coordinated, timely and consistent support. Instead of separate services creating separate plans, everyone works to one shared set of goals. This leads to: quicker access to the right help, fewer repeated assessments or mixed messages, less pressure on families to coordinate everything, support that adapts as needs change. Overall, it improves the experience and outcomes for young people by organising services around them, not around the system.

No, they’re related, but not the same. Multidisciplinary working focuses on different professionals collaborating around a person’s care, often within a single service or organisation. It’s an important part of good practice, but it can still result in each professional going away and delivering their own piece of the plan separately. Integrated care however, aims to join up not just professionals, but services, systems, and processes across health, social care, education, justice, voluntary, and community sectors. It isn’t just about people talking to each other; it’s about making sure the support itself is coordinated. For children and families, this means creating a single, coherent plan that reflects shared goal, not a collection of separate professional plans. Integrated care focuses on aligning processes, reducing duplication, and ensuring support feels joined-up from the child’s perspective.