Social Development Minister Anne Tolley was in Wanganui to officially launched the team, the eighth of its kind in the country.
"Changing the lives of vulnerable children is not something we can do overnight and no one agency can do it on their own," she said.
Mrs Tolley said it the Children's Team would provide a level of support which was not currently there.
"Some people don't like to ring CYF, they think that's a step to far," she said.
"So the Children's Team sort of fills that gap between a single (agency) working with a family... and statutory intervention.
"It's trying to get anyone who has any concerns about how that family is functioning, whether that child is at-risk or not, making a report of concerns."
She estimated about 400 children in the Wanganui area would be in need of such a service and hoped 170 of those would be be working with the team in the first two years.
"These are children that are already out there and they need to access services that are already there but they're not," she said.
"Agencies have to talk to each other. They have to share information and they have to trust each other."
Wanganui mayor Annette Main spoke at the launch about the importance of children to the community.
"This is a community where we really really need our children to be safe, we want our children to be thriving and our children to be happy," she said.
"We've heard the say over and over again 'it takes a village to raise a child'. We need to put that into action."
Danelle Whakatihi has been appointed the director of the Whanganui Children's Team, coming from a social work background.
She said the team already had 25 professionals ready to go who would hit the ground running.