t. Every case is a battle with health – [starting] at the beginning with every single child, as if the conversations about previous children have not happened. Challenges around young people with complex needs, often co-morbidity of mild learning difficulties or trauma-caused developmental delay and psychological distress. I am continuously reminding them that they do have responsibilities for challenging behaviour for under-18s, they don't for over-18s, but they say it is for our commissioned service in CAMHS to provide and CAMHS say they have not been commissioned by the ICB to do this. (DCS, Unitary, North West Region) Some DCSs considered these problems to be underpinned or compounded by the fact that the DfE’s production of the statutory guidance (HM Government, 2023) did not appear to have been co-produced and jointly owned by the Department for Health and Social Care, Home Office or the Ministry of Justice. Working together to safeguard children (HM Government, 2023) establishes the role of lead safeguarding partner, requiring the most senior officials across the local authority, police and health to have a clear line of sight to the quality of practice. This was widely regarded as impractical by DCSs, who asked how chief executives and chief constables were realistically able to do this. Apparently, in Working Together my chief executive and the area commanders and the ICB chief executives can do all the heavy lifting. DCSs have argued for quite a while to have more power and control over partnerships than less, and in a way, making me [the DCS] a senior manager is pretty much saying your role is really a sub-level role. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense at all. (DCS, Metropolitan, North East Region) In many cases, health and the police were said not to a