Child Protection Authority Consultation: Government Response

A key role of the CPA will be to make sure that learning leads to real change. This includes making it easier for those working with children to access clear guidance and practical support, and ensuring that lessons from reviews and cases are followed through.

The CPA will provide national leadership and oversight of the child protection system. It will ensure that evidence and insight are used more effectively and that learning translates into meaningful change.

It will bring together data, evidence, practitioner expertise and the voices of children, families and survivors to strengthen how the system identifies and responds to significant harm. By doing so, it will support earlier intervention, clearer accountability and more effective multi-agency working.

The CPA will play a central role in:

identifying emerging risks and patterns of harm earlier, enabling earlier and more co-ordinated responses;

building a clearer national picture by bringing together information from different agencies;

promoting and embedding good practice so that learning is consistently applied; and

supporting the implementation of recommendations, ensuring that where improvement is needed, action follows.

It will also strengthen accountability across the system, working closely with inspectorates, regulators and Government Departments. We are exploring options to legislate, when parliamentary time allows, to equip the CPA with appropriate powers to act where serious or persistent failings leave children unprotected.

Crucially, the CPA will reflect the multi-agency nature of child protection. It will bring together expertise from all agencies that have a role in protecting children and across all settings where children could be harmed. Above all, the CPA will place the experiences and voices of children, families and survivors at the centre of its work.

The establishment of the CPA sits within a broader programme of reform to strengthen child protection.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, we are improving how the system works in practice, including through strengthened multi-agency arrangements and improved information sharing. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 introduces a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse, while wider cross-Government work, including action to tackle violence against women and girls and new duties of candour for public authorities, is helping to create a more transparent, accountable and effective system.

Together, these reforms reflect a determination to ensure that the system is better connected, more responsive, and more able to prevent harm as well as respond to it.

The CPA will play a critical role alongside wider reforms, supporting more joined-up working between services and helping to ensure that learning leads to better outcomes for children.

The Government are committed to establishing the Child Protection Authority and are exploring options to legislate when parliamentary time allows. In the meantime, we will continue to develop the CPA’s functions and capabilities, building on the existing work of the child safeguarding practice review panel. I would like to thank the panel’s members and chair for their work to date.

This marks an important milestone on the journey towards establishing this new body. We will continue to work closely with partners across the system, and with children, families and survivors, as we move towards implementation.

Our goal is clear: a child protection system that is expert and decisive, better connected, more responsive, and focused on delivering meaningful change; that supports those working to protect children, learns from experience, and acts promptly where improvement is needed; and, above all, that ensures children are protected and supported to achieve and thrive.

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