1.11 Preparation for Reforms under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

1. Planned Reforms

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill published in November 2024, following on from the Policy Paper: Keeping Children Safe Helping Families Thrive (Department for Education) sets out the government’s planned reforms to education and children’s social care.

The Families First Programme Guide confirms the Department for Education’s expectations of safeguarding partners in implementing reforms in the Bill, including reforms relating to:

• family help;
• multi-agency child protection; and
• making greater use of family group decision making.

The Department’s expectation is that the period until March 2026 will be ongoing business-as-usual service delivery, alongside transformation activity. It also expects that the Families First Programme Guide should be used by safeguarding partners and other relevant agencies and organisations within their local areas to begin planning for transformation activity and implementation,  building on the foundations of what is already in place through the requirements of Working Together to Safeguard Children and the Children’s Social Care National Framework: Statutory Guidance on the Purpose, Principles for Practice and Expected Outcomes of Children’s Social Care 2023.

The Department has also commissioned a Foundations Toolkit from the What Works Centre for Children and Families, which includes:

• Foundations Guidebook – information about interventions that make a difference to children and families’ outcomes;
• Practice Guides – recommendations about how to put evidence-based support into action.

The Foundations Practice Guides provide evidence-based recommendations for those commissioning and delivering child and family support at the local level, and the Foundations Guidebook provides evidence-based examples of interventions that put these practices into action.

The Practice Guides set out high quality evidence about how best to achieve the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework and translates this into key principles and recommendations to support local leaders in strengthening family services. The Families First Programme Guide states that local partnerships should look to these Foundations Practice Guides as a key source for guidance on the latest evidence.

The Families First Programme Guide sets out the Department’s expectations for practice and areas of local flexibility to support safeguarding partners to plan their transformation activity for family help, multi-agency child protection and family group decision making.

Expectations include that safeguarding partnerships should:

• work together to publish a refreshed threshold document by March 2026;
• update their local protocol for assessment and support;
• establish the Family Help Lead Practitioner (FHLP) role and develop a multi-agency workforce development plan outlining the training, knowledge and skill levels for the family help workforce including the FHLP role;
• move towards an integrated front door, where contacts and referrals can be triaged to the right level of service, and implement digital solutions such as a service directory, social media and also roles such as community connectors and service access points which provide accessible opportunities for families to understand and access support;
• establish expert-led Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs);
• establish expert social worker Lead Child Protection Practitioners (LCPPs), embedded within MACPTs, who will be responsible for statutory child protection decisions drawing on the expertise and knowledge of the wider multi-agency practitioners in the team;
• consider and set out chairing arrangements for child protection conferences within the MACPT, whilst ensuring clear ongoing quality assurance, and consider how the team will quality assure child protection plans;
• develop an evidence-based approach to making greater use of family group decision making;
• develop appropriate infrastructure for sharing, storing and analysing information and updating case management systems (the Bill provides for a consistent child identification number known as a Single Unique Identifier);
• secure the participation of education and childcare settings as relevant agencies as well as ensuring that their views are sufficiently included and represented at strategic and operational levels in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements.

2. Implementation in Buckinghamshire

Locally, the Families First programme team, led by the Council’s Service Director for Transformation has established a dedicated programme structure to prepare for the implementation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill reforms. This work is being coordinated through a local governance framework overseen by a new Families First Governance Board which will report into the Buckinghamshire Safeguarding Children Partnership (BSCP) board. Key planning activities include:

• Programme governance and oversight: the Families First programme team is working closely with partner agencies including police and health Families First leads to interpret national guidance and align with local priorities/structures. Governance arrangements have been progressed to ensure accountability and strategic direction for onward transformation activity.
• Collaborative planning with partners: the team is engaging with safeguarding partners to consider co-design approaches for family help, multi-agency child protection, and family group decision-making. This includes reviewing current practice against the expectations set out in the Families First Programme Guide and potential identifying areas for improvement. Crucially, the first part of this work involves taking stock of our strengths, what is working well and where there are gaps which can be addressed by these reform measures.
• Workforce development: initial work is underway to engage with staff and scope the requirements for the new proposed structures and roles such as the Family Help Lead Practitioner (FHLP) and Lead Child Protection Practitioner (LCPP) role and to develop a multi-agency workforce development plan. This plan will outline training, knowledge, and skill levels needed to deliver high-quality family help services.
• Digital and infrastructure planning: the team is exploring options for the implementation of the Single Unique Identifier for children, as required by the Bill.
• Evidence-based practice: local planning is informed by the Foundations Toolkit and Practice Guides, ensuring that interventions and service models are grounded in the latest evidence about what works for children and families.

These activities are designed to ensure that Buckinghamshire is ready to meet the Department for Education’s expectations by March 2026, balancing business-as-usual service delivery with the transformation required under the new legislative framework.