The Department for Education (DfE) is to quiz councils on the balance of social workers and alternatively qualified practitioners in family help teams, which authorities are expected to roll out over the next year.
The requirement to provide this information is likely to be included in conditions set by the DfE for councils' use of the £270m children's social care prevention grant in 2025-26.
A core purpose of the grant is the rollout of family help, which involves merging existing targeted early help and child in need services into multidisciplinary teams including social workers, family support staff and practitioners from disciplines such as substance misuse or domestic abuse.
Under the approach, any of these professionals could take on the role of "lead practitioner" in working with families who need targeted early help or whose children have been deemed to be in need.
Removal of social work requirement for child in need assessments
While councils had previously been required, under Working Together to Safeguard Children, to allocate child in need assessments to social workers, this requirement was removed by 2023 revisions to the statutory guidance.Under the current policy, staff, including those outside of the local authority, will be able to take on the role, now termed ‘lead practitioner’, under the oversight of a social work qualified manager or practice supervisor.
The approach of allocating assessments and cases to any of a range of practitioners is being trialled by the 10 families first for children pathfinder areas. These local areas are testing elements of the previous Conservative government's children's social care reforms that are being continued by its Labour successor.
Besides family help, the pathfinder includes creating multi-agency child protection teams and involving family networks in decisions about children's care when families are struggling, including by providing financial support packages to help keep children safe at home.
Duties to set up multi-agency teams and offer family meetings
These reforms are being partly implemented through the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will require councils, police and health partners to set up the multi-agency teams and oblige local authorities to offer parents a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting when considering issuing care proceedings in relation to their children.They will also be put into effect nationally through the children's social care prevention grant, in relation to which the government issued draft guidance this week.
This said the grant was ring-fenced for "the implementation of family help and child protection reforms" and the implementation of the FGDM duty.
Supporting families 'to overcome challenges early'
Funding should be used "across the full breadth of preventative services, including early help, family help, family networks and child protection," said the draft guidance. "These should support families to overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity, prevent escalation and effectively intervene with high-risk problems."Councils should use the funding in tandem with the £253m allocated in 2025-26 to the Supporting Families programme - under which a key worker is allocated to support families with multiple needs - in investing in family help and other preventive support. Though this money has been rolled into a broader children and families grant, worth £414m, only the Supporting Families money should be used as part of the family help rollout.
The government said some of the children's social care prevention grant - potentially about 30% - should be used on the design and transformation of services, rather than their delivery. As part of this, councils must appoint a named lead responsible for running the programme, along with a senior practice lead, whose role would include practice and cultural change.
Short- and medium-term objectives
The draft guidance said councils should, through the use of the grant, see progress against a set of short- and medium-term objectives.It said the short-term goals were:
- Professionals and agencies understanding their new roles and responsibilities and how to work together effectively.
- Improved staff knowledge of, and confidence in providing, effective support for children and families.
- Families having an improved understanding of the services and support available to them.
- Families feeling more involved in the design of services.
- Improved experiences for children and families, including improved relationships and trust with services, families receiving the right support at the right time and wider family networks being involved earlier.
- Services better meeting the needs of children and families.
- Improved decision making and case management.
- Improved information and data sharing between professionals and agencies.
Reporting requirements
The draft guidance said councils would need to report regularly to the DfE to provide assurance they were meeting the objectives. This would include the quarterly collection of data, including:- Detail on the family help workforce, for example, the number of social work-qualified and alternatively qualified workers and the number of local authority and non-local authority employed practitioners.
- Information on the children benefiting from family help and child protection services, for example, the numbers receiving family help.
- The number of FGDM meetings offered prior to or at the letter before proceedings to parents or those with parental responsibility and the number of meetings facilitated after the offer is made.
