Structural fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) composite joints are nowadays widely used in diverse sectors including aerospace, maritime, civil infrastructures, renewable energy and automotive. However, the greatest technical challenge to enable the increased efficiency of FRP composites is to develop structural joining solutions that are mass efficient, robust, and supportable in-service and through life with minimal inspection and maintenance costs. The “holy grail” of composite joints is to combine multiple features including damage resistance, damage tolerance, self-repair, in-service health monitoring and ease of inspection. This paper outlines recent work carried out to address this technical challenge by enhancing the structural and damage tolerance properties of carbon-epoxy T-shaped composite joints via tufting using shape memory alloy (SMA) filaments. Experimental testing revealed that the ultimate load, ultimate displacement and absorbed energy capacity of the T-joint increased with the areal density of SMA tufts against plain composite T-joints with no tufts. Under specific conditions, the shape memory effect of SMA tufts could also be activated via electrical resistance heating to partially or completely close cracks in the T-joint caused by over-loading. Moreover, this study investigated the thermal-electric properties of SMA tufts to exhibit multiple functionalities in the composite T-joint including material-enabled thermographic inspection and structural health monitoring via local strain self-sensing. This last functionality was particularly explored to detect low-velocity impacts. Experimental results using the Instron 9450 drop-weight impact machine showed that the proposed SMA-enabled detection system could capture accurately the time of the impact and localise the delamination onset, thus paving the way for the development of multifunctional composite joining systems combining enhanced through-the-thickness damage tolerance and self-sensing capabilities.