The government has increased funding for children's social care reform by an additional £547m over the next three years.
The boost, announced last week, means £2.4bn will be ploughed into developing family help services, multi-agency child protection teams and family group decision making meetings, under the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme, from 2026-29.
This is in addition to the £541.5m provided this year for the same measures, which are designed to both improve support for families with complex and multiple needs, to enable them to keep their children with them where possible, and sharpen the quality of child protection practice.
The additional resource, announced as part of a Ministry of Housing and Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) policy statement on local government finance, was described as "a chance to fix a broken system" by children's minister Josh MacAlister.
In a post on LinkedIn, he said it would "reset the system away from crisis intervention to earlier help for family".
What children's social care reform funding is for
Under the FFP programme, councils are expected to develop the following provision over the coming years, starting in 2025-26:- Multidisciplinary family help services: these are responsible for supporting families across targeted early help, child in need and child protection, through the provision of a consistent lead practitioner and a team around the family, with the objective of keeping families intact where it is safe to do so.
- Multi-agency child protection teams: these are designed to improve the quality of safeguarding practice by bringing together skilled social workers, police officers, health practitioners and education professionals into single teams, an approach that will be put into law through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
- Family group decision making meetings: these involve giving extended families the opportunity to hold meetings and develop plans to safeguard and promote the welfare of children involved with early help or social care; under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, councils will be required to offer such meetings to families at the pre-proceedings stage, to enable them to develop alternatives to children going into care.
£2.4bn over next three years
The £547m from 2026-29 announced last week will be combined with resource announced in the government's spending review in June for the FFP programme, comprising:
- £1.57bn (£523.5m per year) to continue what was allocated in 2025-26 through the new children's social care prevention grant (worth £270m this year) and through the FFP element of the children and families grant (£253.5m this year), itself formerly distributed for the now defunct Supporting Families programme.
- £319m from the government's transformation fund, which is designed to improve public services and make them more efficient. The £319m is part of £555m allocated for children's social care reform generally in the spending review. A further £18m of this was added to the FFP programme in 2025-26.
All three elements are being merged into a new children, families and youth grant, through which councils will receive £853m in 2026-27 and 2027-28 and £729m in 2028-29 for the FFP programme.
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