can exercise their rights • Ensure practitioners have been trained to understand information governance and sharing arrangements, who they can contact in their organisation for advice, and where to direct children and their families should they need additional advice The importance of sharing information with colleagues outside of your agency or organisation It is likely that practitioners working in different agencies or organisations that have contact with children and their families will only have a partial view of what is happening in their lives. Sharing information helps to build up a fuller picture and is therefore an intrinsic part of any practitioner’s job when working with children and families. Similarly, it is also important to share information with agencies that may be formulating a risk assessment about whether a particular individual poses a risk to children. 20 A safeguarding partner in relation to a local authority area in England is defined under s.16E of the Children Act 2004 15 Decisions about how much information to share, with whom and when, can have a profound impact on individuals’ lives. If you have concerns about a child, it is important to act on those concerns. The importance of providing feedback to agencies or organisations about the information they have shared When attempting to safeguard a child, practitioners should act in accordance with local procedures and, unless there is a sound reason not to, they should provide timely feedback21 on decisions taken following information being shared, to ‘close the loop' with the professional who shared the information. Feedback can help encourage dialogue and develop a better understanding of when and what to share. A lack of feedback can contribute to a hesitancy to share information in the futu