Children’s chiefs warn against rolling out reforms unfunded

Without extra funding, local authorities could struggle to achieve the same positive outcomes as those councils involved in piloting child care reforms, executives told LGC.

This week the Department for Education policy paper Keeping children safe, helping families thrive unveiled legislative plans to build on experiences of local authority pilot practices and recommendations from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, led by Labor MP Josh MacAlister.

The reforms outlined in the policy document “build on evidence” from the Families First for Children Pathfinder Program launched last year as part of the Stable Homes Built on Love strategy.

From July 2023 to March 2025, the 17 participating local authorities are developing and testing reforms in family support, child protection, family networks and safeguarding partners.

This program focused on preventing children entering the care system with new multi-agency child protection teams and is now to be rolled out across all local authorities following the pilot.

Local authorities participating in the pilot schemes received a share of the £45 million government grant, which funded the recruitment of additional staff, funded secondments from multi-agency partners and even contributed to the travel costs of family members.

Children’s service directors from these local authorities told LGC that without this additional funding and their pre-existing “conditions for success”, their positive achievements from the pilot would not have been possible.

Director of children’s services at Pathfinder Warrington MBC, Amanda Perraton told the LGC that these reforms are “100 per cent in the right direction” but the government “should provide new task money so teams can be set up” for councils who do do not have these provisions in force.

The inclusion of wider family networks in the decision-making process for the child is a key feature of the Pathfinder programme. In the policy document, the government plans to make family group decision-making compulsory for all local authorities, in the hope that it will increase the inclusion of all people who are important to the family and provide more choice for kinship carers.

Wolverhampton City Council was one of three local authorities in the first phase of the Pathfinder pilot. Director of Children’s Services at the meeting, Alison Hinds shared her support for the proposed reforms based on her experiences of implementing them.

Requiring family group decision-making for all local authorities is a reform. She is “very supportive” of getting all family members involved “as early as we can in a family’s journey because we want to make sure that children can stay with their birth family where they are. sure do that.”

She said: “If family networks work together to provide support, this will help reduce reliance on statutory services and build longer-term resilience in families.”

Questions about education

Ms Hinds also supports plans to include education as a legal partner in protection because “we recognize the significant role that education providers play in the lives of children and families”.

Before the breakthrough, Wolverhampton had an “education sub-group” as part of safeguarding arrangements, but the pilot funded a new strategic education leadership role to “determine how realistic it is for the whole education sector to be represented and to monitor the difference which it does for safeguarding practices in the city’.

But Pinaki Ghoshal, chief executive for children and young people at Lewisham LBC, pointed out that this policy document was “largely silent on schools” as she described the education landscape as “fractured” and feared there was “no clear incentives’ for schools to be more inclusive.

He added that proposals to give local authorities the power to prevent a child in a child protection plan or involved in a section 47 investigation being home-educated affected a “relatively small population” and ” this would already be taken up by child protection processes. “.

To improve data sharing between all safeguarding partners, the government plans to build on the multi-agency experiences of those who have made discoveries and introduce a single, unique identifier that should prevent families from repeating their stories. each time to interact with a different agency.

Mr Ghoshal said this was a “good idea” that needed more detail. Using the NHS number “makes sense” and is something Lewisham is considering in its pilot programme, but “getting the different systems talking to each other is no small problem”, he added.

In response to the policy paper, the British Association of Social Workers urged the government to “avoid reliance on other pilot schemes”, warning against directing funding to pilot areas and “diluting” the role of social workers in safeguarding.

Their statement on these policy proposals states that “it is right that every area of ​​England should provide the same level of family support and welcome services, with more agencies working at the forefront of this work”.

But added “concerns remain” about the change to allow alternative qualified social care staff to hold children in cases of need, a strategy all investigating authorities are pursuing.

“The social work role is crucial, highly skilled and must not be diluted by sharing specific safeguarding tasks with professionals who have little or no background in this area,” it said.

And he added: “These reforms must be paired with significant investment in the social care workforce. Social workers are already stretched, handling heavy cases and facing staff shortages. Without sufficient resources, these ambitious plans risk falling short.”