Wirral leads the way in Families First for Children Programme
New guidance published by the government on 20 March will set an expectation for all councils to carry out reforms in how they approach child protection and early family help. The reforms aim to ensure all families receive the right support at the right time, and to help catch concerns before they escalate.
The Families First for Children Partnership Programme, funded by the Department for Education, aims to improve support for families, helping more children stay in safe, loving homes while protecting vulnerable children from harm when necessary.
As one of ten local authorities selected to deliver the Families First for Children Pathfinder Programme in April 2024, Wirral Council will continue this innovative work and will support authorities across the North West to embed these changes under the new guidance.
The Pathfinder was a ‘test and learn’ programme, where our teams were tasked with creating new systems and processes and implementing changes to several areas of children’s social care.
Following the programme’s success, it’s thrilling to see new guidance now being implemented across the country, based on the work of our teams and the other authorities involved.
Under this new guidance, we will continue to build on the already incredible work and improvements we’ve seen during our own journey with the Pathfinder, and we will be sharing our learning and best practice with teams across the North West as they now follow suit.
Under the new guidance, all councils will now begin work to introduce the same family help and child protection reforms already rolled out in Wirral. These include:
- A family help lead practitioner for every family to act as a primary point of contact throughout their journey.
- Multi-disciplinary Family Help Teams to wrap support around families.
- Front Door arrangements to reduce the number of transfer points for families.
- Police, health, education, and councils working together to implement multi-agency child protection teams
- Family group decision making to engage wider family to support parents ahead of a child going into care.
The benefits of these new approaches have already been seen across the borough. Multi-agency and multi-disciplinary teams, where specialists and key workers from different services or organisations work together, have been particularly successful, with more effective collaboration leading to families receiving the right support, more quickly.
Speaking about Family Help teams, who work in this way, one Wirral Council social worker said:
Rather than requesting a review to determine if a child needs statutory or specialist services, we discussed a family with our Family Hub Social worker and the Team Manager. We agreed that a social worker intervention/support was needed so they picked this up and went out with our worker, all within 24 hours rather than 2 weeks.
Under this initiative, Wirral is leading the way in creating a brighter future for families, while shaping national reforms in children’s services nationwide.
Cllr Bennet said:
Change can be difficult, but I’m proud of every individual involved, across many Council teams, schools, police, third sector and partner organisations for their commitment to embrace that change.
Thanks to them, families and professionals are seeing real improvements, with faster response times - sometimes in just a few hours – and families are feeling more supported. That’s what we’re striving for.
With the roll out of the new guidance, Wirral Council have big plans on the horizon to build on the existing work of the Pathfinder programme. These plans include:
- Expanding the multidisciplinary teams to include even more services and strengthen collaboration across agencies – this will enable comprehensive help to be tailored to each family’s needs.
- Trialling a new team-based approach to cases involving harm from outside the home, such as criminal exploitation, in areas with the highest need.
- Increasing capacity to help more families earlier, reducing the need for formal interventions.
- Launching a befriending service, designed in collaboration with third-sector organisations, to help families feel supported and connected.
- Establishing parent forums to hear directly from families about what works for them and where improvements are needed.
For more information about the Pathfinder pilot in Wirral, visit: Families First for Children Pathfinder - Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership
For more information about the Families First Programme Guide visit: Families First Partnership Programme guide
