A ‘lightbulb moment’ during a meeting to support looked after teenager

During a recent Team Around the Child (TAC) meeting involving a 16-year-old young person, I found myself reflecting on something that felt both familiar and slightly unexpected.

My attendance at the meeting formed part of a piece of work commissioned by the local authority to support children’s services practitioners in applying the Mental Capacity Act 2005. 

As the discussion progressed, it became increasingly clear that the structure and content of the meeting closely resembled what would typically take place within a best interest meeting under the Mental Capacity Act.

Professionals were discussing the young person’s needs, risks, accommodation arrangements, and support requirements. The views of family members were considered, and the young person’s wishes and feelings were explored. The team reflected on the level of supervision required and whether the current arrangements remained appropriate. 

All this information was being gathered collaboratively and thoughtfully by the professionals present.

The nature of these discussions is also consistent with the expectations set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children (2023), which emphasises coordinated multi-agency decision-making to support children and young people.

In practice, these multi-agency conversations often generate information that is equally relevant to several statutory frameworks.

It mirrored the information that would ordinarily be gathered when applying the best interest’s checklist under the Mental Capacity Act.

At the same time, much of the same discussion would also inform transition planning under the Children and Families Act 2014. 

The meeting touched on the young person’s longer-term aspirations, their developing independence, and how services might evolve as they approach adulthood. 

These are precisely the types of considerations that are expected to be addressed within Education, Health and Care Plan reviews, particularly from Year 9 onwards, where preparation for adulthood becomes a focus.

Likewise, the information being shared would also be relevant to transition assessments under the Care Act 2014, where statutory guidance encourages local authorities to begin considering potential adult care needs from around Year 9.

Spanning all of this is the enduring welfare framework of the Children Act 1989, which continues to guide decision-making about the young person’s care, safety, and wellbeing.

My ‘lightbulb moment’ was that the same core information was being gathered in ways that could simultaneously support several different statutory frameworks. This was not explicitly recognised by the practitioners involved.

Lived experience is not linear

The observation prompted a broader reflection on how we often conceptualise statutory frameworks in practice. Legislative duties are frequently presented to practitioners as separate and sequential processes: a children’s process here, a transition process there, and an adult framework emerging later. 

However, the lived experience of practitioners, and of the young people they support, is rarely so linear.

During adolescence, particularly between the ages of 14 and 18, multiple legislative frameworks begin to overlap. Children’s welfare duties, education planning, transition to adulthood, and decision-making capacity may all be relevant at the same time.

Rather than existing in neat sequence, these frameworks often operate more like intersecting systems, each drawing upon similar information about the young person’s needs, wishes, risks, and future support.

The visual model above illustrates this idea as legislative orbits converging around the young person. At certain moments, such as a TAC meeting, those orbits intersect. When that happens, professionals may unknowingly be gathering information that could serve several statutory purposes simultaneously.

Opportunity to grasp

Recognising this convergence could offer an opportunity for both practitioners and strategic leads. Rather than viewing different legislative duties as entirely separate exercises, there may be scope to consider how existing meetings and discussions could meet multiple statutory aims at once, provided that the relevant considerations are clearly captured.

For practitioners, this perspective may also offer reassurance. The analysis required under different legal frameworks is often less unfamiliar than it first appears. In many cases, the professional discussions already taking place within multi-agency meetings contain much of the substance required by several pieces of legislation.

The challenge, therefore, may not be that practitioners lack the right conversations. Instead, it may lie in recognising how those conversations relate to the wider legislative landscape and ensuring that the relevant considerations are appropriately recorded.

What appears to be a routine TAC meeting may, in practice, represent a moment where several statutory “orbits” briefly align, offering a valuable opportunity to support the young person’s journey toward adulthood through a more integrated understanding of the legal frameworks surrounding them.

Neil Humphreys is qualities assurance manager with Action First Assessments