The DfE's child protection and family support reforms explained

In recent months, leading social work academics Eileen Munro and Ray Jones have levelled significant criticisms at the government's reforms to family support and child protection, which councils and their partners have been implementing since April of this year.

Jones said he believed they would increase the number of child protection cases and reduce support to families, contrary to their aims, while Munro warned the reforms were "very likely to fail", due to the scale of change and what she saw as a lack of testing.

This week, the DfE released its first evaluation of the testing of the reforms in 10 pathfinder local authority areas from 2023-25, which put a more positive spin on the changes.

It found that staff anticipated that the reforms would "drive positive outcomes for them including the strengthening of existing partnerships, increased understanding of families’ needs, reduction in caseloads and reduced paperwork, which they feel, could enhance job satisfaction".

Practitioners also felt that there were signs of a positive impact on families, including receiving support earlier and having a better experience of child protection conferences, though they acknowledged it was too early to draw firm conclusions.

But what are the changes that Munro and Jones are so concerned about and what do they mean for social workers, other social care practitioners and leaders in England's children's services?

The background to the reforms

The reforms originate from the findings of the 2021-22 Independent Review of Children's Social Care and the last government's 2023-24 Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, which is being taken forward by the current Labour administration largely intact.

Prior to the rollout of the reforms, from April 2025, the DfE published a guide for safeguarding partners on implementing what it now calls the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme.

The agenda entails new roles, team structures and multi-agency working arrangements, and has two aims: providing earlier and more effective support to families to prevent escalation of their needs and enable children to stay at home safely; and intervening in a "forensic and decisive" way when children do need safeguarding from significant harm.

Over time, the Department for Education (DfE) expects the overhaul to result in "a significant reduction in the numbers of looked after children" in England, courtesy of a "fundamental rebalancing of the whole system".

How much money is available to implement the reforms?

The DfE has identified £523.5m for councils to implement the reforms in 2025-26:

• £270m of this is new money, provided through the children's social care prevention grant, which is ring-fenced for the implementation of the changes.
• £253.5m is money that would have previously been allocated to the Supporting Families programme, which ended in March 2025. Under Supporting Families, a key worker was allocated to support families with multiple needs to meet defined outcomes.

In its spending review, the Treasury confirmed that this money would be available annually from 2026-29. In addition, it provided £555m from 2025-28 to support children's social care reform, some of which will also support the FFP agenda.

The DfE expects about 30% of the 2025-26 funding to be spent on the costs of transformation, with the rest available to invest in services.

As it expects the reforms to result in a reduction in the number of children in care, it anticipates this releasing resources that will also "contribute to the rebalancing of the system".

By when must councils transform services?

In her critique, Munro raised concerns about reforms on such a significant scale happening all at once.

Though councils and their partners are expected to significantly reform services by 31 March 2026, the DfE does not make this a deadline for completing the process.

"Changes to service structure, workforce roles, practice frameworks and oversight arrangements will require time to design and implement," says the FFP programme guide.

"Our expectation is that the next year (April 2025 to March 2026) will feature ongoing business as usual service delivery alongside transformation activity."

The availability of further reform funding up to 2028-29 suggests that the DfE acknowledges that change on the scale expected will take time.

Must councils follow the FFP programme guide?

The FFP programme guide is not statutory guidance, so councils and their partners are not under a duty to have regard to it.

It states that safeguarding partnerships should implement the changes in line with the statutory guidance that they are bound by: Working Together to Safeguard Children, in the case of all safeguarding partners, and the Children's Social Care National Framework, for councils.

However, the DfE says that the FFP programme guide sets out the practice changes it expects to see implemented to improve the support provided to children and their families.

This is supported by the fact that councils need to follow the conditions of the children's social care prevention grant or risk having some of this removed.

These conditions include that councils should produce local delivery plans, drawn up with partners and in consultation with children and families, for their new service models.

Though such models should be "tailored to local context", they must also be "based on best evidence", for which more information is provided in the FFP programme guide. This implies that the guide should be followed.

Also, two elements of the FFP programme will become requirements under the current Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill:

• Creating multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs): safeguarding partners will be required to establish and run at least one local MACPT, including social work, education, health and police professionals, to support the local authority in delivering its duty to investigate cases of suspected significant harm under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.
• The duty on councils, when they are considering applying for a care or supervision order, to offer the child's parents a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting, to enable the child's family network to discuss the child's welfare and make proposals in response to concerns. (This article does not cover the duty to provide FGDMs).

What is family help?

The cornerstone of the reforms, family help encompasses the wide spectrum of support for families that sits between universal services, such as primary healthcare, schools and family hubs, and the care system, Specifically, it comprises:

• Targeted early help - services for children who have multiple or complex needs requiring a specialist and/or multi-agency response but where statutory intervention is not needed.
• Children in need - support provided under councils' duty, under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need, and promote their upbringing by their families, by providing services appropriate to their needs. Children in need are those who are unlikely to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development without services, or whose health or development are likely to be significantly impaired without such services, or who are disabled.
• Child protection - interventions related to councils' section 47 duty to investigate where they have reasonable cause to suspect a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm, including placing children on child protection plans where such harm is established.
• Family reunification - support to help children in care return to their families.

The aim of family help, according to FFP guide, is to "enable children to thrive and families to remain together", and it is based on the following principles:

• providing support to families with multiple or complex needs at the earliest opportunity;
• offering holistic services to the whole family through multi-disciplinary support;
• ensuring consistency of relationships for children and families by allocating a lead practitioner who should not change as they move between targeted early help and child in need;
• providing one plan that will stay with families but adapt as needs change.

Family help assessments and plans

In line with the emphasis on continuity of support, families receiving family help should receive "single assessments and plans which can be adapted and built on over time".

Assessments should be adaptable to the needs of the family and consider the needs of the whole family, while capturing the voice of the child or young person and making clear that their needs are paramount.

The FFP guide advises councils and their partners to follow guidance on assessments and planning in Working Together, including that plans "provide clear, measurable outcomes for the child or young person and set expectations for families, with reviewable actions to track progress".

Despite the emphasis on continuity across tiers of need, child in need assessments remain subject to the timeframes set out in Working Together - under which they should be completed within 45 working days of referral - whereas no such national limits apply to targeted early help assessments.

The make-up of multidisciplinary family help teams

Family help is to be delivered by multidisciplinary teams, drawing on a range of partners. Unlike multi-agency child protection teams, these are not being enshrined in legislation, and the FFP guide allows councils and their partners significant latitude over key elements.

In terms of membership, the FFP programme guide says that the teams should include social workers and family support workers.

But beyond that, it is not prescriptive and merely suggests other disciplines that may be represented, such as domestic abuse, substance misuse, child or adult mental health, special educational needs and disability youth justice, youth work, probation, housing, health visitors or police.

Practitioners may play a variety of roles in the team, including providing direct support to the family, offering consultative support to the family help lead practitioner (FHLP) or being a link back to their home organisation, suggesting staff will be employed by a range of agencies.

Teams may be new or extensions of existing teams, and their size and location "will depend on local circumstances", the guide says, though family hubs are suggested as an option for housing the teams. While co-locating practitioners makes it easier for families to access services, "it will be for local partnerships to determine their local arrangements", it adds.

The guide also says that "a team around the family" (TAF) will be formed by the FHLP for each family, bringing in relevant agencies and individuals. It is not made clear whether TAF members will generally be members of family help teams, implying that will be a matter of local discretion.

The family help lead practitioner (FHLP) role

Working Together already stipulates that authorities should allocate a lead practitioner for families under targeted early help, children in need or child protection, to carry out assessments, do direct work, co-ordinate support and convene multi-professionals meetings.

However, it largely considers these roles separately.

The FFP programme guide brings all of these roles under one umbrella - 'the family help lead practitioner' - and states that, as far as possible, families should have consistency in their FHLP throughout their journey through the children's social care system.

"The FHLP will remain the main point of contact for the family for as long as they require support," it says.

"Children and families have said they want a consistent, trusting relationship with a practitioner. To support and preserve such relationships, FHLPs should carry out or co-ordinate all or most of the direct work with the family for as long as it is safe to do so."

The FHLP's role is to:

• build a relationship with the family and be their point of contact;
• conduct assessments and implement a whole family plan;
• establish the team around the family;
• offer family group decision making (FGDM) to support families to find their own solutions;
• engage the multi-agency child protection team (MACPT) where there are concerns about likely or actual significant harm;
• where there is likely or actual significant harm, maintain co-ordinated support for the family and deliver the child protection plan;
• create a sustainability plan with the family, so they can refer back to the challenges they have overcome, their strengths and next steps when moving on from family help.

Who can be a family help lead practitioner?

2023 changes to Working Together to Safeguard Children removed the requirement for statutory children's social care assessments to be carried out by social workers, enabling child in need cases to be held by a range of practitioners, though stipulating that child protection cases must be held by social workers.

The safeguarding statutory guidance says that local assessment and support protocols, drawn up by councils and their partners, should establish who can act as a lead practitioner in child in need cases and "set out the skills, knowledge, experience, and competence required" for the role and how this will be monitored locally.

This position reflected in the FFP programme guide.

It says that FHLPs:

• will be "a range of practitioners from different disciplines with the right knowledge, skills and experience to support families who need help and support";
• may be social work qualified or have "alternative appropriate skills or qualifications";
• "may or may not be employed directly by the local authority", but will be "integrated into multidisciplinary family help teams with appropriate oversight set out in the safeguarding partners’ local protocol".

Allocating cases between social workers and family support workers

As social workers and family support workers are the only required members of family help teams, FHLPs are likely to be largely drawn from these two groups.

The prospect of family support workers taking on child in need cases was among the concerns raised by Munro, echoing points previously raised by the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and Ofsted.

She questioned whether family support workers would be able to identify changes in families' situations that signalled increased risks to children, due to a lack of training, despite Working Together requiring that all child in need cases are overseen by a social work-qualified practice supervisor or manager.

There was an echo of her concerns in the evaluation of the 10 pathfinders, which found that alternatively qualified staff  were "less confident in their understanding of how to assess and manage risk in section 17 cases compared to social workers". At the same time, "social workers were apprehensive about alternatively qualified staff in family help lead practitioner (FHLP) roles holding these child in need cases under the new model, as this was a greater level of responsibility than they were used to".

The FFP programme guide acknowledges this issue to some degree, saying experienced social workers will be able to support less experienced FHLPs within family help teams, while adding that social workers should be FHLPs for children in need whose needs are "particularly complex".

It also stresses that lead practitioners, whatever their background, should have access to "high quality...reflective, consistent and reflective" supervision to improve their practice and support their development and wellbeing.

What happens when there are child protection concerns?

Working Together stipulates that when a child becomes the subject of a child protection enquiry, under section 47, the lead practitioner should be a social worker. However, this is a reference to the practitioner responsible for child protection processes, including leading enquiries, and decision making.

Under the FPP programme, these roles fall to multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs), including the specialist social work role of lead child protection practitioner (LCPP).

Meanwhile, the family continues to receive support from an FHLP, "who will be responsible for the co-ordination of support and services that may be needed while a section 47 enquiry takes place, as well as throughout any subsequent child protection plan".

When a section 47 enquiry is initiated in relation to concerns of significant harm regarding a child not previously known to family help, they should be allocated an FHLP who is a social worker. Where the child is already on family help's caseload, for example if they are a child in need, the programme guide stipulates that the FHLP should be a social worker from the point that the child is placed on a child protection plan ie once significant harm has been established.

This means that, in some cases, the FHLP will have to change at this point. This poses a challenge for the maintenance of relationships between families and practitioners that is core to family help, particularly as FHLPs will be tasked with ensuring that "the day-to-day life and experiences of the child and family are really understood, and child protection decisions centre this information".

The DfE's answer to this conundrum has two elements. Firstly, safeguarding partners should consider whether a social worker should be appointed as the FHLP at the outset of a case, based on the complexity of a child's need, including any concerns about significant harm.

Secondly, where a change of FHLP is required, consideration should be given to retaining the first lead practitioner as part of the team around the child.

About multi-agency child protection teams

Under the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, safeguarding partners will be required to set up one or more MACPTs in each local authority area, each including at least one health professional (appointed by the relevant NHS integrated care board), police officer, education professional and social worker (the latter two both being appointed by the council).

The FFP programme guide states that these practitioners should be "dedicated, experienced, highly skilled and suitably qualified", and that partners may also involve other agencies in the teams, such as probation, domestic abuse or youth justice, based on local need.

The teams' functions include:

• leading section 47 enquiries, gathering information about whether a child is suffering significant harm, to support decision making;
• initiating emergency protection orders or police protection powers;
• chairing strategy meetings and child protection conferences (see below);
• overseeing the development, review and closure of child protection plans;
• deciding whether to move into pre-proceedings and the Public Law Outline;
• providing advice and consultation for practitioners who need multi-agency child protection expertise.

In setting up the teams, the guide says that safeguarding partners should carry out actions, including:

• deciding on the number of teams and their locations, including whether they should be based on localities or specialist practice areas, such as exploitation;
• determining how MACPTs integrate with and build on existing arrangements, such as multi-agency safeguarding hubs;
• agreeing and allocating resources, and setting out arrangements for senior management oversight of, and accountability for, teams across agencies;
• setting out how operational decisions and the related responsibilities of different agencies will be made and quality-assured for children who are the focus of section 47 enquiries and child protection plans.

Munro raised concerns about how far the police and NHS would contribute to MACPTs, questioning whether they would be able to allocate a practitioner each to every team.

The role of the lead child protection practitioner

LCPPs, with the support of the wider MACPT, are responsible for child protection decision making under the new system.

The guide says that LCPPs should be "qualified social workers with substantial frontline child protection practice... and an in-depth knowledge of the statutory and legislative framework".

They should be "skilled at identifying and responding to all types of significant harm, including extra-familial harm", ensuring MACPTs maintain "a consistent focus on best interests of the child", including when children offend as a result of exploitation or grooming.

The guide also says they should "know how to work skilfully and confidently with families and parents in child protection, situating them as partners where safe to do so, and including those who have demonstrated resistant, hostile and/or deceptive behaviour".

In his critique of the reforms, Ray Jones was highly critical about the introduction of LCPPs, saying this would result in "crucial decisions being taken by child protection social workers who know the children and families less well and who have no continuing longer-term commitment to, or contact with, the families".

The DfE's response to that is that the family help lead practitioner will ensure that child protection decisions are informed by knowledge and understanding of the family, though this seems reliant on the FHLP not having changed at the point of child protection action being initiated.

Controversially, the LCPP will also chair child protection conferences. This is despite Working Together stating that the chair - whose role is to support the participation of all parties to the conference, families in particular - should be "independent of operational and/or line management responsibilities for the case".

The FFP programme guide suggests that the LCPP, by virtue of being independent of the line management of the FHLP, can fulfil this function.

However, Munro, like BASW, was highly critical of the move.

“[LCPPs] are the people with the most important information and they should not be focused on chairing a meeting,” she said. “You can’t contribute and chair at the same time. As a chair your job should be monitoring the whole thing. I find it really hard that they would decide that.”