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The government will create a national agency to provide oversight of child protection practice in England, the safeguarding minister has revealed.

The Child Protection Authority (CPA) will provide “national leadership and learning on child protection and safeguarding”, with work to establish it beginning this year, Jess Phillips told the House of Commons this week.

Creating a CPA in each of England and Wales was one of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) final report, published in 2022.

Inquiry’s proposal for Child Protection Authority

IICSA said these should be independent statutory bodies that would be repositories of expertise on child protection and tasked with improving practice, advising governments on policy and, where necessary, inspecting institutions.

The inquiry said they would fill gaps in current arrangements by inspecting non-statutory or unregulated organisations where children spend time and multi-agency child protection arrangements.

However, the then Conservative government rejected the proposal – in relation to England – in 2023, on the grounds that many of its proposed functions were already being carried out by existing bodies. These included the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (“the national panel”), which reviews learning from serious child protection cases.

The Welsh Government has said that the country’s existing National Independent Safeguarding Board fulfilled IICSA’s proposed remit for a CPA.

Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel remit to be expanded

In her statement to the Commons, Phillips said the CPA would initially be set up within the national panel, with work starting immediately to expand the panel’s role.

This would involve giving the panel “the resources it needs to increase its analytical capacity and its capability to develop high-quality material for practitioners”, said an accompanying Home Office report on the government’s approach to IICSA’s recommendations.

Later this year, the government will consult on the make-up and remit of the CPA, including any aspects that would require legislation. The Home Office report did not commit itself to retaining the CPA within the national panel in future or setting it up as a separate body, meaning this may be consulted upon.

Phillips told the Commons that the consultation would “take time” and not involve “upending an entire system”.

Authority ‘must help make difference to children’

The panel welcomed the plan for it to “help create the foundations for a new Child Protection Authority across England” and said it was committed to working closely with the government on this.

Its chair, Annie Hudson, said: “The panel’s oversight and work to support learning from serious incidents where children have died or been seriously harmed, inside and outside their families, provides important insight about how children can be better safeguarded and protected from all forms of abuse.

“It is important that the powers and remit of a new Child Protection Authority will help make a difference to children.”

“We are committed to working closely with government and other stakeholders as plans develop and the detailed roadmap is progressed,” she added. “It is vital that all those who work with children participate in the forthcoming consultation so together we develop a child protection system that keeps children’s needs at the heart of all decision making.”

No inspection function for Child Protection Authority

While the department said that IICSA’s recommendations would be “core to the development of the consultation”, it ruled out giving the CPA any role in inspection.

This was to ensure that agencies were “transparent about failings” with the CPA to enable it to “provide expert advice on how to improve and change”, an approach that could be impeded by giving it inspection powers.

The Home Office also highlighted findings from IICSA and other organisations that inspectorates had “failed to identify abuse taking place in institutions”.

Joint inspection on CSA within families

In relation to inspection, it said it Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the police and probation inspectorates would carry out a joint targeted area inspection (JTAI) of agencies’ response to child sexual abuse in family settings in autumn 2025.

The Home Office also pledged to create a cross-government working group to look at improving single and joint inspection of child protection and post-inspection accountability arrangements, to ensure areas acted on recommendations.

IICSA also recommended that the government appoint a cabinet-level minister for children to provide a sharper focus across government on
issues affecting them.

The Home Office said the government would not be implementing this specific recommendation, with the education secretary – currently, Bridget Phillipson – remaining the cabinet minister responsible for children’s issues.

Cross-government child protection board

However, it said that a “keeping children safe” ministerial board, including all ministers with roles affecting children, would be set up to support cross-government working on safeguarding. Its role would include:

• Monitoring delivery of the CPA and taking advice from it, on government policy on child protection, once it had been established.
• Tracking progress on the implementation of national panel reports, including its 2024 review of intrafamilial child sexual abuse (CSA). This found that children were too often ignored or disbelieved by practitioners, who lacked the knowledge, skills and confidence to combat this form of abuse.
• Overseeing the work to strengthen multi-agency child protection inspection.

Plan for mandatory reporting of CSA

The government has already pledged to implement one of IICSA’s key recommendations, the introduction of mandatory reporting of CSA by those in position of trust over children where they have received a disclosure of, or witnessed, abuse.

This will be introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill. However, the government has departed from the inquiry’s recommendations in two key respects:

• There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report CSA in line with the duty. Instead, such a failure would constitute “relevant conduct” that would be liable to have the person being included on the Disclosure and Barring Service’s list of people barred from working with children.
• There will be no requirement to report CSA based on the reporter witnessing recognised signs of the abuse, such as sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse, such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Specialist therapy for victims and survivors

IICSA also recommended that victims and survivors of CSA be given a guarantee of specialist therapeutic support.

In relation to this, the Home Office said it would “work on ambitious proposals for improving the therapeutic support offer”, setting out details in the forthcoming spending review, which will set government expenditure limits from 2026-29.

It also pledged to double annual funding this year for national services supporting adult survivors of CSA.

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Rachael Wardell’s year as president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) is a pivotal one for children’s social care in England.

In the next 12 months, the Department for Education (DfE) expects councils to “transform the whole system of help, support and protection, to ensure that every family can access the right help and support when they need it, with a strong emphasis on early intervention to prevent crisis”.

Under the DfE’s Families First Partnership programme, authorities and their partners are tasked with establishing family help services – to support families with multiple and complex needs to stay together where possible – and multi-agency child protection teams – to intervene decisively when children are at risk of significant harm.

These reforms are underpinned by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which also heralds action to reshape placements for looked-after children, to boost sufficiency and quality, better support children with the most complex needs and curb excess profit-making by providers.

An eye-watering challenge for DCSs

It would be a daunting agenda at the best of times for directors of children’s services also facing severe challenges in relation to other areas, such as special educational needs and disability (SEND) services.

But against the backdrop of global economic turbulence, deepening child poverty and tight public finances, the challenge seems eye-watering.

However, Surrey council director Wardell, who succeeded Andy Smith on 1 April 2025, says she is excited to take the helm at ADCS.

Rachael Wardell (photo supplied by ADCS)

“It’s a really interesting time to be president. With a relatively new government with a big agenda, I think it’s a very exciting time to be working closely with the Department for Education and others.”

Her approach, she says, will be one of continuity with her predecessors, adding that it is important for the association not to be “chopping and changing in terms of what we’re seeking to do when we work with government”.

“What we’ve learned that if you work with central government, you can’t, in the life of one presidency, necessarily achieve change that you set out to achieve. It happens over years.”

Influence on agency social work policy

An example of this is policy on the use of agency social workers in children’s services.

Wardell’s predecessor but three, Charlotte Ramsden, spoke out on the issue in 2021, calling for national pay rates for locums to manage costs and enhance workforce stability.

Ramsden’s successor, Steve Crocker, went further the following year, in suggesting an outright ban on social work employment agencies to tackle the “profiteering” practices of some.

The DfE then proposed national rules to regulate councils’ use of agency staff, which were consulted upon under Crocker’s successor, John Pearce, and then started to be implemented under Wardell’s predecessor, Andy Smith. Both Pearce and Smith worked with, and sought to influence, the department on the rules’ content.

The rules’ implementation will conclude under Wardell, who has been involved in ADCS’s influencing effort throughout as chair of its workforce policy committee, until 2024, and then vice-president over the past year.

Fall in use of locums ‘influenced by rules’

The DfE’s latest children’s social work workforce data showed the first fall in agency numbers in seven years, in the year to September 2024. Though this was one month before the rules came into force, Wardell is clear that they were a factor in councils’ reduced use of locums.

“I’m pretty clear that it is a response to anticipating the changes coming in and lots of positive conversations between agency social workers and their local authorities about whether now is the right time for them to become permanent.”

With the rise in the number of permanently employed social workers exceeding the fall in the number of locum staff, Wardell says it is not a case of agency workers leaving the profession.

“Obviously, we have to wait and see if it continues to play out in that positive way,” she says. “But all of the anecdotes I hear, alongside the data that I see, says that we are having different kinds of conversations with our social workers about permanent employment, which is a positive thing.”

The current Labour government is going further than its Conservative predecessor on the agency rules by, firstly, putting them into law, and, secondly, applying them to council children’s social care staff generally.

Wardell welcomes this move, saying ADCS was concerned about bad practices, such as some agencies only supplying authorities with whole teams, not the individual locums they need, being applied to non-social work staff.

Recognising the value of non-social work staff

These staff – early help workers, family support practitioners – will play a critical part in the DfE’s social care reforms, as part of family help teams, holding cases as lead practitioners, including after they enter the statutory realm of a child being in need.

Wardell welcomes this acknowledgement of these practitioners’ skills and experience.

“A lot of times there was a failure to recognise the other qualifications that they had,” she says. “They are already tremendously skilled and experienced and we welcome that parity of esteem that the new framework provides for them.”

Concerns have been raised, including by Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers, about the potential risks from not having social workers hold statutory cases.

However, Wardell says councils are already investing in the professional development of family support staff, and other non-social workers, and she expects this “to be strengthened under these arrangements”.

But what of the government’s wider agenda of rebalancing the social care system away from putting children on child protection plans or taking them into care towards supporting families to stay intact?

Councils have succeeded in boosting investment in family support since 2021 following several years of stagnation, but spending on it pales in comparison with expenditure on safeguarding and the care system.

Prospects for success for plan to ‘rebalance’ social care

Wardell says the prospects for rebalancing the system are “the best in a long time”. Most councils, she says, have practice models – such as family safeguarding – that are focused on supporting families to resolve their needs and stay together.

This is now being aided and abetted by policy, legislation and funding.

To help them engineer the shift, the DfE has provided authorities with a £270m children’s social care prevention grant in 2025-26, which they are expected to use in tandem with further just over £250m previously allocated to the now closed Supporting Families programme.

Wardell says this is “absolutely better than not having that funding there at all”, but is not sufficient on its own, being a small fraction of council spending on children’s social care (about £14bn).

“Some of our challenge is to bend the rest of our resources in the same direction – and to treat the funding like yeast, as a catalyst,” she adds.

Making this happen is no easy task, given the other pressures on children’s services.

Combating the high cost of placements

Not the least of these the high and rising cost of placements for children in care, as a result of an increasing care population, with more and more complex need, shortages of provision and alleged “profiteering” by providers.

The government is seeking to tackle this both through investment in children’s home capacity and foster care and reforms to the commissioning, regulation and provision of placements.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would enable ministers to direct councils to set up so-called “regional care co-operatives” in order to commission care collectively, giving them greater power to shape provision to meet children’s needs.

It would also introduce DfE financial oversight over the most significant providers, to guard against them unexpectedly failing and leaving a gap in provision. In addition, it would provide ministers with a backstop power to cap provider profits, should other measures not curb excess profit-making.

Wardell is positive about this package of reforms.

However, whatever the merits of legislative reform and increased funding, councils’ success in rebalancing the system are also dependent on the demands on them generated by social needs and pressures.

‘More child poverty and social disadvantage’

“We’ve seen upwards pressure driven by child poverty and some of the impact on our communities of social disadvantage and also some of the other changes in society around extra-familial harms, exploitation and radicalisation, all of which are challenging to respond to,” she says.

Beyond that, the government is now wrestling with the impact on the public finances of a less secure and more economically turbulent world. This heralds tight public finance settlements for services other than defence and the NHS in the forthcoming spending review, which will set expenditure limits from 2026-29.

Wardell’s message to ministers is to stay the course on children’s social care reform, based on an invest to save argument.

“We would say that we need a long-term financial settlement that provides us with security for children’s services and for local government more broadly, to go forward,” she says.

“I think that we would say that if you get things right for children, you are storing up positive financial impact for future years, because you have lower cost pressures when those young people reach adulthood.”

by Sophie Baker

This is the fourth installment in Sophie Baker’s ‘What I wish I had known…’ series, where she reflects on her approach to practice when she started out – and what she would tell her younger self now.

Watching Adolescence this month brought back many memories of my early career. I was struck by the powerful acting, especially in an intense scene between Jamie (played by Owen Cooper) and his psychologist, where he was shouting, swearing and knocking over furniture.

It reminded me of my experiences with Shauna, a ten-year-old girl who spent much of her childhood in and out of care and who was one of the first children I worked with.

Shauna’s mother, who had bipolar disorder, provided loving care when well. But during her low periods, she couldn’t get out of bed and struggled to meet her children’s needs. In her highs, she took risks, falling into debt and forming unsafe relationships.

During these times, Shauna experienced physical and emotional neglect in a home environment that was dysregulated, chaotic and volatile.

Each time their mother’s mental health declined, Shauna and her siblings were moved to a temporary foster home, waiting for the moment they could return to her care.

As a result of her experiences, Shauna was often oppositional, impulsive and confrontational. It also meant that it became harder and harder to find her a stable foster placement.

Looking back, the memory of one afternoon I shared with Shauna leaves me contemplating what I wish I had known during my work with her.

Children won’t always behave in a way you expect

Sophie Baker has over 20 years of experience working in children’s social care

Some of my most treasured memories of my early career were spent with Shauna. For the most part, our interactions had been positive.

However, this afternoon was different. We were sitting in my car when I broke the news that she would be moving to another carer.

Abandoned. Again.

She immediately started shouting and screaming, banging her fists against her head and the car dashboard. I could feel my heart beating in my chest as she moved her face close to mine. She glared at me and then spat on my cheek.

Shauna spent the next five minutes or so in what I can only describe as white rage.

She took out my CDs and snapped each one.  She bent my sunglasses out of shape and threw them out of the car window.

Lastly, she got out of the car and climbed on to its roof. As I tried to encourage her down, she jumped up and down, denting it in the process.

Children with trauma will struggle to regulate their emotions

I can still remember the emotional and physical responses I experienced during her outburst. Initially, I was shocked.

I had been told that Shauna got angry, but up until that point had never experienced it firsthand. I was frightened that she would not only hurt herself but also hurt me as she hurled herself around.

My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest, and I could feel my cheeks burning red. My hands were shaking and as I tried to calm her down, my voice was trembling. I felt helpless to calm the situation.

What I learnt over the first few years of my career was that children that have experienced trauma like Shauna often struggle to regulate their emotions and behaviours. They can have impulsive and intense reactions to stress.

If I were able to turn back time, I would tell myself that Shauna was communicating in the best way she knew how. My role in that moment was to listen and to reassure her that I would stay with her until she calmed down.

No judgement – just unconditional support.

Their anger probably feels as frightening for them as it does to you

I am not ashamed to say that I was petrified during those moments. What I wish I had known was that Shauna was probably very frightened too, struggling to recognise the huge feelings she was experiencing.

Even as an inexperienced social worker, I knew it was imperative that I stayed calm and did not get caught in any kind of power struggle with Shauna. She needed time and space to calm down.

I knew that I needed to validate her feelings and show her I could contain her (and myself!). I needed to remain a positive role model by handling my own feelings in a calm way and modelling a healthy response to stress.

That was easier said than done, but I took deep breaths and kept reminding myself that I needed to be a source of strength for her.

Work to help a traumatised child to feel safe

There are some techniques I have learnt along the way that I wish I had known then. These start with seeing beyond her immediate behaviours and asking myself, ‘What does Shauna need?’, rather than, ‘What is wrong with her?’.

Looking back, I now see I should have helped Shauna feel safe. Instead of immediately trying to calm her down, I wish I had started by reassuring her that she was safe.  She was safe with me as a trusted adult, and I wasn’t going to leave.

I also wish I had asked Shauna if there was anything I could do to help. Then and there. Did she need a hug?  To hold my hand? A drink of water? For me to put on some chilled-out music in the car? Letting her have a bit of choice and control over the situation may have helped her calm down a little easier.

In hindsight, I probably tried too hard to offer solutions to Shauna during her outburst.

I was trying to make her feel better, but offering solutions to problems in a time of absolute crisis was not helpful. Mentioning how a new foster placement could be great or that they had a dog (she loved dogs) was not an appropriate response for that moment.

Managing professional guilt

I remember the feeling of overwhelming sadness washing over me as I watched her. She was distraught.

The sensible part of me knew that it wasn’t my fault that Shauna needed to move to new carers, but I was wrought with guilt.

I felt like she had been failed by a ‘system’ that was unable to match her with foster carers who would offer her unconditional care; failed by the social workers who had come and gone over her short life; failed by me, who hadn’t been able to visit her as often as I would have liked.

I was devastated.

As I matured in my practice, I came to realise that there is a real danger for social workers to hold feelings of guilt. Much of our work relies on resources that are often lacking and can be hard to manage.

However, with good supervision, I got to a place where I felt I was practising in the best way I could and felt less guilt about the constraints of the resources available to me.

Is that good enough? Sometimes it has to be.

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The government has committed £25m to boosting foster care recruitment and support in England from 2026-28.

The money was announced in the government’s spring statement last month, when the Treasury said it would be used to recruit a further 400 fostering households.

Further details were provided last week by children’s minister Janet Daby, in response to a written parliamentary question from Liberal Democrat MP Tom Gordon.

Daby said the money would be available over two years – 2026-27 and 2027-28 – and was also designed to fund peer to peer support for foster carers, as well as bolster recruitment.

The funding builds on £36m allocated from 2023-25 by the previous government and £15m for 2025-26 provided by the current administration to tackle shortages in England’s fostering capacity. There was a 10% drop from 2021-24 in the number of mainstream foster carers – a category that excludes kinship carers approved to look after specific children.

Investment in regional fostering schemes

The investment to date has been designed to roll out regional fostering recruitment and retention programmes, set up by clusters of local authorities. These comprise three elements:

1. A fostering recruitment support hub, providing an information and support service to help prospective carers from their initial enquiry to making an application.
2. A communications campaign to drive interest in fostering across the region and increase the number of enquiries received by the hub.
3. Expanding the ‘Mockingbird model’, developed by the Fostering Network in the UK, under which “constellations” of fostering households provide mutual support to one another, led by an experienced carer who provides a ‘hub home’ for the others. A 2020 evaluation of the scheme for the DfE found that households who participated in Mockingbird were 82% less likely to deregister than households who did not.

In her answer to Gordon, Daby did not confirm whether the £25m for 2026-28 would provide further funding for these regional programmes or a different purpose.

Foster carers ‘lack authority to take decisions’

Alongside the increased investment, the DfE is also planning to enable foster carers to take more day-to-day decisions about children in their care.

Currently, a child’s placement plan must set out where authority to make decisions has been delegated from parents and councils, where they share parental responsibility, to carers, in relation to matters including healthcare, education, leisure, home life, faith and social media use.

Statutory guidance states that foster carers should have delegated authority in relation to day-to-day parenting decisions, but the Fostering Network has warned that this is not borne out in practice.

The charity worked with Green MP Ellie Chowns to table an amendment to the current Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to give foster carers delegated authority over these decisions by default.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Pledge to reform delegated authority rules

Though this was not accepted by the government, it has pledged to consult on amending the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, which set out the current rules around delegated authority, to achieve the same result.

In her response to Gordon, Daby said: “The department has also begun conversations with the sector about proposed changes to delegated authority, ensuring that all foster carers have delegated authority by default in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care.”

The minister added that the DfE was “committed to improving practice and guidance” in relation to the handling of allegations against foster carers, which she said was “a key contributor to high levels of…deregistration”, but did not set out further details.

Fostering body urges greater focus on retention

Daby’s statement came as fostering information service Foster Wiki released a report about carer recruitment and retention, based on analysis of data and its research with carers.

While praising the DfE’s investment in regional recruitment hubs as “a crucial and commendable step” in addressing fostering’s workforce challenges, it called for a sharper focus on retention to prevent experienced carers from leaving the sector.

This should include greater professional recognition of foster carers, backed by ongoing training and nationally recognised qualifications, a remuneration system based on skills, specialism and experience, and an independently managed allegations process, with representation and advocacy for carers.

More than half of social workers feel unprepared to tackle the impact of social media on children, a Community Care poll has found.

This follows the release of Netflix drama Adolescence in March, which sparked a national debate in the UK around the growing influence of online content on children – particularly young boys.

The four-episode series follows the aftermath of a 13-year-old boy being accused of murdering a girl from his school and explores children’s exposure to misogyny and incel (involuntarily celibate) culture online.

‘An emerging and growing problem’ – Starmer

In the wake of the show’s success, prime minister Keir Starmer described the online radicalisation of boys as “an emerging and growing problem” and backed screenings of Adolescence in secondary schools.

However, he cautioned that there was not a “lever” he could pull to solve the problem, adding: “Only by listening and learning from the experiences of young people and charities can we tackle the issues this groundbreaking show raises.”

With social workers often supporting children who spend long periods online, how equipped do they feel to tackle the influence of online culture?

A Community Care poll with 640 responses found that one-third of practitioners didn’t feel “at all” equipped to address the influence of social media on children, while 25% said they were only “a little” equipped.

Only 15% stated they were “very” well-equipped, and 27% said they were “somewhat” so.

If you’d like to share or write about your take on Adolescence and working with children who spend long periods online, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

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Ofsted has sharpened its focus on stability for children in care in its judgments of social care providers, particularly children’s homes and independent fostering agencies.

The changes to its social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) are a response to concerns that some providers are rejecting referrals for children with complex needs due to concerns about the impact on their Ofsted ratings.

As a result, those children are being placed far from family or friends, experiencing multiple moves or ending up in unsuitable or unregistered accommodation.

Ratings concerns ‘driving rejection of children with complex needs’

Research for the regulator published last year found that 60% of local authorities believed these concerns were often or always a reason that homes rejected referrals for children with complex needs.

By contrast, 60% of children’s home providers said concerns about the impact of a child with complex needs on their rating were never or rarely a reason for rejecting a referral.

At the time of the research’s publication, Ofsted said there was almost no difference between SCCIF grades for homes that care for children with complex needs and those for all homes, with about four in five judged good or outstanding.

This reflected the fact that the SCCIF “was designed to focus on children’s progress and experiences, as opposed to their outcomes”, meaning inspectors should take account of children’s starting points.

However, in a blog post published last month, Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said that the perception persisted among some homes that taking on a child with more complex needs would hurt their rating.

Greater focus on stability in inspection framework

Ofsted said the changes, enacted last week, would put a sharper focus on:

• how providers promote and sustain stability for children, including those with high needs;
• how providers balance the needs of a child requiring placement with those already living in the setting;
• the timeliness of a provider’s work to prepare children for their next move;
• how accurately placement decisions reflect a provider’s statement of purpose.

“We want providers to be risk-aware, not risk-averse,” said Stanley.

“I hope these changes send a clear message that we will recognise providers who step up to support our children with complex needs, and who stick with them though the most difficult times.”

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English councils have increased spending on family support services since the start of the decade following years of stagnation, an analysis has found.

Annual real-terms spending grew by 21% from 2020-21 to 2023-24, compared with 2% from 2014-15 to 2020-21, found research on early intervention funding carried out for the Children’s Charities Coalition (Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, National Children’s Bureau and NSPCC).

The analysis, by research firm Pro Bono Economics, found that spending on early intervention services in general – Sure Start centres, youth services and family support – grew by 13% (just over £300m) in real-terms from 2020-21 to 2023-24.

Family support compared with statutory social care spending

This was driven by growth in family support spending specifically, which increased from £1.44bn in 2020-21 to £1.74bn in 2023-24, in real-terms.

Despite the increase, family support spending was well below councils’ net expenditure on safeguarding children (about £3.3bn) and looked-after children (£7.7bn) in 2023-24.

The government’s children’s social care reforms, which are being rolled out from this month, are designed to engineer a shift in the balance of spending towards early intervention by enabling more children to remain, safely, with their families, through improved support.

New model of working with families

Under the Families First Partnership programme, councils are expected to set up multidisciplinary family help teams with responsibility for families with multiple and complex needs who previously would have come under targeted early help, child in need or child protection services.

The model is designed to provide families with a consistent practitioner – a family help lead practitioner (FHLP) – to carry out direct work and co-ordinate other services, to enable the family to receive tailored support as early as possible.

While new multi-agency child protection teams will be responsible for carrying out enquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 and other safeguarding functions, family help teams and FLHPs will remain involved and continue to provide support to the family in those circumstances.

Additional funding for prevention

The reforms are backed by a £270m children’s social care prevention grant, which councils are expected to combine with £253.5m previously spent on the Supporting Families programme to develop and rollout the new approach.

Around £13m of the £270m grant is designed to fund the expansion of family group decision making meetings, under which extended families come together to make decisions about how children should be safeguarded where statutory services have concerns.

Under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, councils must offer families an FGDM meeting whenever they are considering issuing care proceedings, to provide family networks with the opportunity to identify alternatives to the child going into care.

Social workers believe racial bias greatly affects child protection practice, a poll has found.

This follows a recent report by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel on the impact of race, ethnicity and culture on cases where children have died or suffered serious harm.

The case reviews studied, which involved mixed-heritage, black and Asian children, were “silent” about the presence of racial bias in professionals’ decision making and on the role of racism in services’ responses to families.

The panel found that children’s race and ethnicity were often not recognised, appropriately explored or understood by practitioners, resulting in them not having a full understanding of children’s lived experience and the vulnerabilities they faced.

Only 7% said racial bias affected child protection practice “not at all”, while 5% believed there was “little” influence.

The national panel’s report is the latest in a series of studies to highlight issues with the way the social care system responds to children and families from black, Asian and ethnic minority communities.

Practitioners did not sufficiently consider children’s needs in relation to their race, ethnicity and culture in responding to child sexual abuse, found a review last year carried out for the panel by the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, a 2023 Nuffield Family Justice Observatory study identified significant ethnic inequalities in the use and timing of care proceedings.

Celebrate those who’ve inspired you

Photo by Daniel Laflor/peopleimages.com/ AdobeStock

Do you have a colleague, mentor, or social work figure you can’t help but gush about?

Our My Brilliant Colleague series invites you to celebrate anyone within social work who has inspired you – whether current or former colleagues, managers, students, lecturers, mentors or prominent past or present sector figures whom you have admired from afar.

Nominate your colleague or social work inspiration by filling in our nominations form with a few paragraphs (100-250 words) explaining how and why the person has inspired you.

*Please note that, despite the need to provide your name and role, you or the nominee can be anonymous in the published entry*

If you have any questions, email our community journalist, Anastasia Koutsounia, at anastasia.koutsounia@markallengroup.com

There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report child sexual abuse (CSA) under the government’s plan to introduce mandatory reporting, despite home secretary Yvette Cooper appearing to have said previously that there would be.

Instead, the government has said that those under a duty to report “may be referred to their professional regulator (where applicable) or the Disclosure and Barring Service [DBS], who will consider their suitability to continue working in regulated activity with children”.

It will also introduce an offence of of preventing or deterring a person from complying with their duty to report CSA.

The proposals, included in the Crime and Policing Bill, are broadly similar to those put forward by the previous Conservative government before it lost power last year.

Response to CSA inquiry recommendation

Both sets of proposals are responses to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) recommendation to require anyone carrying out a regulated activity – those which a person barred by the DBS are prohibited from doing – or in a position of trust with children to report cases of CSA.

However, both the Conservative and Labour proposals differ from IICSA’s in two key respects:

• There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had witnessed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it to them, which the inquiry found or implied were relatively rare.
• There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. In relation to this, IICSA said that a failure by those in a position of trust over children to pass on information about CSA to the police or local authorities was “inexcusable” and “the sanction for such an omission should be commensurate”.

Cooper comments interpreted as heralding criminal sanction

The absence of an offence comes despite Cooper having said, on announcing that Labour would take forward mandatory reporting, that there would be “professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse”.

This was taken as meaning that failing to report CSA, if you were under a duty to do so, would be criminalised.

For example, the House of Commons Library, which provides neutral briefings on parliamentary issues, drew a contrast between the Conservative and Labour approaches in a report on the issue, published in January this year.

“On 6 January 2025, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the government would “make it mandatory to report abuse” through measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, to be introduced to Parliament in the spring,” it said.

“She added that failing to report child sexual abuse would be “an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions”. This is different from the previous government’s proposals for mandatory reporting, under which failing to report would not have been an offence.”

No offence of failing to report CSA

However, when the Crime and Policing Bill was published at the end of February, there was no such offence included.

The bill is now being scrutinised by a committee of MPs, who considered the issue last week, when Labour MP Matt Bishop raised the absence of an offence with crime and policing minister Diana Johnson.

In response, Johnson pointed to the fact that those subject to the duty would include volunteers and taxi drivers taking children to school, as well as professionals such as social workers and teachers.

She said IICSA’s recommendations “were not about criminalising those individuals”, which the government did not believe would be “appropriate”.

“What we were very clear about – again, I think that [IICSA] made this point – is that if anybody tries to interfere with or stop that reporting, that is the criminal offence,” she added. “That is the bit that we think is important to have in the bill.”

Pressure group Mandate Now was heavily critical of both the absence of a criminal sanction and the fact that the duty to report applied only to witnessed or disclosed abuse, given research indicating such cases were rare.

‘Never acceptable to turn blind eye to abuse’

For the NSPCC, head of policy Anna Edmundson said: “It is never acceptable for adults to turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse and essential they act immediately if they have any concerns that children or young people may be experiencing it.”

She said that the “responsibility to report must be underpinned by adequate training”, so professionals and volunteers can “spot the potential signs and indicators of child sexual abuse and respond with confidence”.

“There should be consequences for failing to act in line with clearly established duties to report – including a range of professional and other disciplinary sanctions,” she added.

Legislation ‘a step in the right direction’

Lucy Duckworth, policy advisor at The Survivors Trust, said the legislation, though not going as far as the charity would have liked, was a “fantastic step in the right direction”, in the context of a longstanding campaign to introduce mandatory reporting.

She said criminal sanctions for failure to report would not be effective because “people wouldn’t believe it would happen”.

“The criminal justice system is not fit for purpose,” she added. “What people are concerned about is their reputations. If that position of trust is threatened if people fail to report and you could lose your job, [that will have an impact].”

Duckworth said that though the trust – a membership body for specialist rape and sexual abuse services – would have liked to have seen a duty to report CSA when there were recognised signs of abuse, the Home Office’s view was that “we don’t have a culture where we understand what indicators of abuse look like”.

The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) will continue in 2025-26, with £50m available to fund therapies and specialist assessments for children formerly in the care system.

Children’s minister Janet Daby made the announcement today after being called to the House of Commons to confirm whether the ASGSF had a future, one day after it expired.

The announcement ends months of speculation about the ASGSF’s future, during which Daby – and on one occasion, Keir Starmer – have repeatedly failed to confirm whether the fund had a future beyond 31 March 2025.

Significant uncertainty for children and families

The situation had created significant uncertainty for thousands of children and families, led to some having their therapy brought to an abrupt end and delayed applications for support for those whose needs had been newly assessed by councils or regional adoption agencies (RAA).

Campaigners and therapy providers warned that this had exacerbated the trauma experienced by the children concerned, all of whom were formerly in care and, in most cases, were now in adoptive or special guardianship placements.

When funding ended yesterday, the Department for Education maintained the line ministers had kept to for two months – that it would set out details on the ASGSF “as soon as possible”.

Liberal Democrat spokesperson for education, children and families Munira Wilson then tabled an urgent question in Parliament today asking the government to confirm whether the ASGSF had a future.

Surprise announcement of £50m for 2025-26

To her surprise, Daby responded by saying: “I’m very happy to confirm today that £50m has been allocated for the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund for this year. I’ll be sharing further details with the House in the next few days and opening applications.”

The funding is broadly in line with levels over the past three years, during which £144m was allocated to the ASGSF.

Funding beyond 2026 is subject to the government’s spending review, which will report this summer.

However, Daby said that ministers had “no plans” to end the ASGSF in March 2026, pointing to councils’ duties under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 to assess needs for adoption support and then decide whether to provide services.

Minister ‘appreciates’ impact of delay on children and families

Daby added: “I very much appreciate that the delay conforming continuation has bene a very difficult time for many. I’m especially concerned for children and families as many of those who the ASGSF supports are in great need of continued help.”

She said she also recognised the impact on therapy providers, some of whom have had to seek other sources of work, prompting warnings from adoption leaders of reduced capacity for ASGSF-funded services.

In response, Wilson said: “I welcome the announcement we’ve just heard form the minister, which none of us were accepting as many of us on all sides of the chamber have spent the last few months asking question after question and being batted away and told that an answer was forthcoming.”

Children ‘left in limbo’

She said the fund was for children who had suffered the “deepest trauma”, but they had been “left hanging and in limbo”.

Wilson and several other MPs shared stories of the anxiety experienced by constituents because of the delay in confirming the fund’s future.

Concerns were also raised about the significant backlog of ASGSF cases that will need to be considered by consultancy Mott MacDonald – which administers the fund on behalf of the DfE – when applications reopen.

Conservative MP Julia Lopez asked if there would be resource put into clearing the backlog, but Daby did not answer the point.

No commitment to putting funding on longer-term basis

Though Daby suggested funding would continue beyond 2026, MPs also asked for it to be placed on a longer-term basis.

Currently, funding for therapy is only provided for 12 months – or until £5,000 has been exhausted – meaning councils and RAAs must reapply on behalf of children and families who need longer-term support. However, Daby did not respond to this point.

At one point during the debate, Daby appeared to imply that the fund would be extended to those kinship families who are currently not covered by it, but she later said its remit would not be expanded.

‘What has happened has been really unforgivable’

Sector bodies welcomed the continuation of the fund but heavily criticised the delay in making the announcement.

For Adoption UK, chief executive Emily Frith said: “The fund has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of children and it’s a huge relief to have this commitment for a further year of specialist support.

“Unfortunately the delay has caused great distress for families and has risked further harm to children. There will now be a backlog of applications, and further waits for people in desperate need of support. What has happened has been really unforgivable. The government must open applications immediately, and then announce a permanent Fund so they avoid ever causing such distress again.”

Families face ‘dangerous gap in therapy’

Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies (CVAA) chief executive, Satwinder Sandhu said it was “enormously relieved and pleased that the funding has been confirmed”.

However, he warned: “We now have to redirect our concerns to the thousands of families facing a dangerous gap in therapy, of unknown length, while the fund is flooded with applications (once they re-open the application portal that is).

“It’s a dire situation which needs an emergency strategy from the DfE to identify and fast-track families in most need. There also needs to be consideration of emergency funding to plug the gap or at least reimburse services which have to use their reserves to keep children safe these next few months.”

He added: “What’s clear is that in recent months we have witnessed a shortsighted approach from government towards adoptive families. They recognise the urgent need for more prospective adopters, yet they undermine this by failing to provide adopters with assurances of support which is essential for all children being placed.”

Kinship, which advocates for kinship families, issued a similarly qualified message.

Delay ‘has led to immense worry and stress’

“This news will come as welcome relief to all of those kinship families who were deeply concerned about their children losing access to vital therapeutic support,” said its director of policy and communications, Rhiannon Clapperton.

“However, we remain deeply frustrated that this clarity has only come after the fund had expired and after a lengthy period of unnecessary uncertainty.

“The absence of any information about the future of the fund has led to immense worry and stress amongst the kinship families we support and campaign alongside.”

She added: “It is vital the government now works at pace to mitigate against the negative impacts of the delay and ensure that applications for therapeutic assessments and support can proceed as quickly as possible.”

Call to extend fund to more kinship families

Family Rights Group’s chief executive, Cathy Ashley, said the government had “extended a vital lifeline for families to access therapeutic support for adopted children and some in kinship care arrangements”, but urged ministers to extend the ASGSF’s remit.

“Family Rights Group has long urged the government to remove the requirement for kinship children to have been in the care system to be eligible, and to include those in informal arrangements.

“Longer-term funding security and improving the application process would be a boost to families too.”

Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kinship Care made a similar point in response to the news, saying: “The minister was unclear on whether further children in kinship care could become eligible for this support. Our group, alongside families and the sector, has been calling for this to ensure all children in kinship care who need this are able to access it.

“We are encouraged by the extension but will scrutinise the details including any expansion when they are available.”