Government unveils major children’s social care reforms with £200m investment

The Department for Education outlined the plans today (2 February) which include a £200m package to ‘fix’ the system over the next two years.

The new Children’s Social Care Implementation Strategy outlines the Department’s initial response to the year-long independent review, chaired by Josh MacAlister, which looked into the tragic murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

Early support for families that ‘reduces the need for crisis response’ at a later stage will be the main focus of the reform, building on from the 80 proposals to reform the system put forward by the review panel.

Responding to the Government’s new strategy — Children’s Care: Stable Homes, Built on Love, more details of which are expected to be published by the DfE later today – MacAlister described it as a ‘step in the right direction’ but it must go ‘further and faster’ to reach the tipping point.

He said, ‘It sets out the right direction to move us away from the broken cycle we’re in. Wholesale changes to introduce intensive support for families, more expert child protection and new regional action to create more homes for children in care will get started this year.

‘The £200m of new spending on these measures, and others, will mean there’s a plan to start tipping the scales towards the kind of system children and families urgently need.’

Under the new plans, 12 local authorities will be backed with £45m to embed a best practice model to give early help and intervention to families with challenges such as addiction, domestic abuse or mental health. The findings will be used to implement measures to help families to stay together where possible and overcome adversity.

Other measures include:

•  A new child protection lead practitioner role to work in a fully joined up way with other services such as the police, to better identify and respond to significant harm. 
• A  £9m investment in a kinship care training and support offer for all kinship carers. 
• £30m in family finding, befriending and mentoring programmes to support children in care and care leavers to find and maintain loving relationships. 
• Local authorities will be supported to recruit up to 500 new child and family social worker apprentices and there will be consultation on proposals to reduce over-reliance on agency social workers.

‘We must keep building the momentum, with further funding allocated.’

Anna Feuchtwang, chief executive of the National Children’s Bureau, welcomed the reforms and said the Government is ‘right’ to trial major changes to the system, but she added, ‘We must keep building the momentum, with further funding allocated at the next spending review and pledges from all parties to support this work beyond the General Election. 

Jo Casebourne, chief executive of What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care, said, ‘We welcome the ambition that “every child and family who needs it will have access to high-quality help”.

However, she went on to say, ‘The implementation plan does not address the fact that there is limited evidence on what is likely to be most effective in critical areas such as improving outcomes for children in families where there is domestic abuse, neglect or parental substance misuse.’

The new National Framework, published today for consultation, sets out ‘clear outcomes’ that should be achieved across all local authorities to improve the lives of children and families, ‘raising the quality of practice across the country’.

Another consultation, seeking views on Children’s social care: Stable Homes, Built on Love, the Government’s new proposals to transform children’s social care, closes on 11 May.

 

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