Today, I am launching the programme guide for the families first partnership programme, which will begin delivery from April 2025. This represents a major milestone in the Government’s commitment to rebalancing the children’s social care system through earlier intervention—and ensuring that we break down barriers to opportunity and provide all children with the best start in life.
The publication of the programme guide confirms our expectations of statutory safeguarding partners—children’s social care, police and health—and relevant agencies, including education and childcare settings, when it comes to implementing reforms to family help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision-making. We are building on a body of evidence about what we know works to support families to stay together and thrive.
The programme guide is just one aspect of the wider implementation support offer we are providing through the programme. It includes sharing learning from the families first for children pathfinder, which has been testing reforms in 10 local areas, along with the best practice and best evidence from across children’s social care.
The families first partnership programme is backed by over £500 million of funding in financial year 2025-26, via the local government finance settlement—nearly doubling investment in preventative services. Over time, we expect this investment to safely reduce the number of looked after children.
Our ambition is for high-quality local services that place children and families at the centre of their design and provide meaningful and appropriate support and protection for families as their needs change over time. We will only achieve this if our journey of change is taken as a team, using a multi-agency approach to enact whole-system reform. We envision a transformed system where practitioners from social work, police, health, education and beyond collaborate to promote the wellbeing of children and keep them safe from harm.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all staff across children’s social care, police, health, and education for their tireless efforts in ensuring all children receive the support and protection they need.
Together, we can create a system which provides children and families with the right support at the right time, ensuring more children can grow up with the right love and support around them.
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