Children’s social care reforms

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Photo: HNFOTO/Fotolia

Contents

Aims and objectives of the reforms

The aims of the reforms were set out in the children’s social care national framework, published by the Department for Education (DfE) in December 2023 as statutory guidance for local authorities.

The framework established four overarching outcomes for the children’s social care system:

1. Children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need. The framework states that children’s social care should “work in partnership with parents and carers to address difficulties that families face” and should be “committed to keeping children and young people within their family, wherever it is safe to do so”.
2. Children and young people are supported by their family network. The framework says that children’s social care “needs to consider how to unlock family networks and identify kinship carers to be a source of support, whenever children and young people need help, protection, or care. This support can enable children and young people to remain living with parents and carers, and when this is not possible, allows them to grow up with lifelong loving relationships, even if it they are not living with their birth family.”
3. Children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes. “Children’s social care acts swiftly to protect children and young people from harm, whether that is at home, where they live, or outside in their wider neighbourhood, community and online,” the framework says. “Children’s social care manages the uncertainty and nuances of the complex circumstances in which harm takes place, working in partnership with other agencies to increase safety.”
4. Children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes. “Children’s social care provide homes that offer love, care, protection, and stability for children and young people who are cared for by the local authority, or who are care leavers,” says the framework. “The care that children and young people receive helps to address experiences of adversity and trauma and gives them the foundations for a healthy, happy, life.”

These four outcomes are underpinned by three “enablers”, which are designed to support councils and their partners to achieve the outcomes. These are:

The specific policies that constitute the reform agenda generally fall under one or more of the outcomes or, in some cases, the enablers.

Outcome 1: Children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need

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This aspect of the reforms is designed to shift the balance of children’s social care away from late intervention – child protection and the care system – towards early intervention, reversing a long-term trend.

According to a 2024 report by the Children’s Charities Coalition, annual spending on early intervention services fell from £4bn to £2.2bn from 2010-11 to 2022-23, while that on late intervention provision, such as child protection and the care system ,rose from £6.3bn to £9.9bn.

The need to rebalance the system was a key finding of the 2022 report of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (“the care review”), which has heavily shaped the reforms.

Its key proposal – the introduction of multidisciplinary family help services in every area – is now being taken forward.

Outcome 2: Children and young people are supported by their family network

This aspect of the reforms has two components: promoting the involvement of family networks in decision making about children’s welfare and safety; and better supporting kinship carers.

However, through the 2023 revision to Working Together to Safeguard Children, all councils are already being encouraged to make use of family group decision making, at all stages of their involvement with families:

• • Early help – the guidance says that effective early help provision relies on agencies engaging “effectively with families and their family network, making use of family group decision making, such as family group conferences, to help meet the needs of the child”. It further says this may be appropriate where family networks are supporting the child and parents.
  • Children in need – Working Together says that, when children are subject to child-in-need plans, lead practitioners should consider referring families to a family group decision making meeting if they believe there is a possibility that the child may not remain with their parents – unless this would be a risk to the child. It states that this is “an entirely voluntary process for the family and requires informed consent”, adding: “This should be a family-led forum, where a family network has all the resources, adequate preparation, relevant information, a safe and appropriate environment, and “private family time” to make a plan to respond to concerns about a child’s safety or wellbeing.”

• Enquiries under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 – when concerns of significant harm are not substantiated following a section 47 child protection enquiry, lead practitioners should discuss with the family whether they wish to be referred to a family group decision-making forum, such as an FGC, to determine ongoing support for the child and family.
• Child protection – the guidance says that, one of the responsibilities of child protection lead practitioners (see below) is undertaking direct work with the family network, including through family group decision making, to consider how it can support and update the child protection plan. It also suggests that family group decision making meetings may follow initial child protection and child protection review conferences.
• Pre-proceedings – at the pre-proceedings stage, councils should offer family group decision making, such as an FGC, “to explore potential placements within the family network and to clarify the realistic options available for the child,” the guidance says.
• Reunification – Working Together also says that family group decision making could be an option when a child’s return to their family is being planned, to establish how the family network will support this.

While Working Together supports the use of family group decision making at all these stages, the government only plans to mandate their use at one of them: pre-proceedings.

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The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would impose a duty on councils considering making an application for a care or supervision order to offer a family group decision making meeting to the child’s parents or any person with parental responsibility.

The purpose of the meeting would be to enable the child’s family network to meet to discuss the child’s welfare needs and to make a proposal in response to concerns about their welfare.

This provision is based on research commissioned by “what works” body Foundations, published in 2023. This found that children whose families were referred for an FGC at pre-proceedings were less likely to have had care proceedings issued (59%) compared to those not referred (72%) and were less likely to be in care one year later (36%) compared to those not referred (45%). The government has allocated £13m to implement family group decision making meetings at the pre-proceedings stage in 2025-26.

Supporting kinship carers

Defining kinship care

Prior to 2023, there was no single definition of kinship care. This was addressed through the then government’s kinship care strategy, which defined it as: “any situation in which a child is being raised in the care of a friend or family member who is not their parent”.

This is being set out in law through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The strategy says that this definition encompasses:

• Informal kinship care arrangements, which do not involve the local authority or family court, such as a close relative caring for the child through a private family arrangement.
• Private fostering arrangements, where a person who is not a close relative looks after the child for at least 28 days. The relevant local authority must be notified.
• Where a friend or family member has been granted a child arrangements order (CAO) by the family court to look after the child.
• Where a friend or family member has been granted a special guardianship order (SGO) by the court to care for the child.
• Where a looked-after child is being cared for by a family member or friend approved by the local authority as a foster carer.
• Where an adoption order has been granted in respect of a child to a family member or friend.

The kinship local offer

The government produced statutory guidance for local authorities on kinship care in October 2024. This replaced and updated previous guidance on family and friends care, last revised in 2011, though did not introduce any new requirements on councils.

Though similar to the local policy for family and friends care required under the previous guidance, the government plans to enshrine the offer in law, through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

The bill would require local authorities to publish information about their general approach to supporting children in kinship care and kinship carers in their area, as well as financial support which may be available to them. Councils would also have to take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that children in kinship care and kinship carers receive the information in the kinship local offer.

Piloting financial allowances

A longstanding challenge for kinship carers is that, with the exception of those who are approved foster carers, they are not entitled to a payment to support them in their caring responsibilities.

To address this, the Labour administration is planning to test providing some carers with an allowance in 2025-26, in up to ten local authorities.

Based on the policy planned by its Conservative predecessor, this will be at the value of the current national minimum fostering allowance and be paid only to special guardians caring for former looked-after children.

Practice guidance

Alongside these policy pledges, the Department for Education also commissioned Foundations to produce guidance for local authorities on what works in supporting kinship carers, based on a systematic review of the evidence base. The Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI), which conducted the review, found that the evidence base around how best to support kinship carers was “limited but continuing to grow”.

The US studies analysed suggested that navigator programmes had small but significant impacts on the likelihood of children being placed in kinship care where a decision was made to remove them from the family home, and also on reducing the likelihood of placement disruption thereafter.

Based on this, Foundations’ practice guide says councils should “offer kinship carers specialist support to learn about, navigate and access the support that they are entitled to”, on the basis there was “good evidence” that this worked.

Extending the role of virtual school heads to include children in kinship care

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In September 2024, under the kinship care strategy, the virtual school head (VSH) role was extended to include championing the educational attendance, attainment and progress of children in kinship care. This was on a non-statutory basis, similar to the VSH’s responsibilities, introduced in 2021, in relation to children in need who have, or previously had, a social worker. The government now plans to put these responsibilities on a statutory footing.

Under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, local authorities would be required to take appropriate measures to support the educational outcomes of children in need and children in kinship care (as defined by the bill).

The steps that can be taken under this duty include enabling children to overcome barriers to their educational achievement and improving attendance. The local authority must appoint at least one person to discharge the duty (in practice this is usually the virtual school head). The duty is a strategic duty, which does not extend to the educational outcomes of individual children.

This is in contrast to the existing VSH duties, in relation to promoting the educational achievement of looked after children (under section 22 of the Children Act 1989) and previously looked-after children (section 23ZZA of the Children Act 1989), both of which apply to individual children.

Outcome 3: Children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes

This element of the reforms is about improving child protection practice to keep children safe from harm. The impetus for this comes in particular from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel in its 2022 report into the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

It identified two key lessons from the cases and the panel’s wider learning from safeguarding reviews:

• Multi-agency arrangements for safeguarding children are too fragmented, with inadequate information sharing making it “extremely difficult” to build and maintain an accurate picture of what life is like for the child.
• A need for “sharper specialist child protection skills and expertise, especially in relation to complex risk assessment and decision making; engaging reluctant parents; understanding the daily life of children; and domestic abuse”.

Many of the changes involve making improvements to multi-agency working, so they also fall under the enabler in the national framework that “multi-agency working is prioritised and effective”.

A single unique identifier for every child

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would make provision for a single unique identifier (SUI) for each child (likely to be their NHS number), which specified individuals would have to use when processing information about them for the purposes of safeguarding or promoting their welfare.

Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive says the identifier has the “potential to increase confidence that practitioners from different agencies are talking about the same child and increase the ease and possibility of linking data together across datasets”.

Following the passage of the bill, the SUI will be piloted, to explore and resolve challenges in putting it into effect, before being implemented nationally.

Duty to share information for safeguarding purposes

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The bill would also impose a duty on specified persons and bodies to disclose information that may be relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child to other relevant persons in certain circumstances. The duty applies where the person considers that the disclosure may facilitate the recipient to exercise of any of its functions that relate to safeguarding or promoting children’s welfare, unless disclosure would be detrimental to the child.

Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive says this provision is designed to tackle misconceptions and a lack of confidence among practitioners about when they may share information, in particular without consent. This is despite both Working Together and separate guidance on information sharing for safeguarding practitioners stating that consent is not required for sharing information for the purposes of safeguarding children.

In fact, the latest update to the information sharing guidance says that consent is “not usually the most appropriate lawful basis” for professionals to exchange information in a safeguarding context. This is because “practitioners are often under a professional duty to record information – irrespective of the wishes of the child or their family – in order to justify the decisions and actions they take in relation to the child’s needs”.

Safeguarding children not in school

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill also includes a series of measures designed to improve the protection of children not in school. These include:

• Compulsory registers of children not in school in each local authority area in England, and a duty on local authorities to support the children on their registers (should a parent request this).
• Changes to the school attendance order (SAO) legal framework, for example, by introducing statutory timeframes for issuing and processing SAOs and making it an offence for parents to withdraw a child subject to an SAO from school without following the proper procedure.
• A requirement for a parent to obtain local authority consent to home educate if a child is: (1) subject to an enquiry under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, (2) on a child protection plan, or (3) at a special school or academy.
• A power for the local authority, in cases where a child is subject to a section 47 enquiry or on a child protection plan and is already being home educated, to review whether it is in the best interests of the child to be in school and require that the child be registered at a school.
• A duty for local authorities to consider the home environment and other learning environments when determining whether or not children should be required to attend school.

Outcome 4: Children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes

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While reducing the number of children in care is a key ambition of the reforms, this is matched by the objective of ensuring those who do need to be in the system have “stable, loving homes close to [their] communities” (Stable Homes).

This is in the context of longstanding concerns about the insufficiency of suitable care placements leading to children being placed far from home or in inappropriate settings, and about providers making excessive profits by exploiting the shortages.

In broad terms, the reforms seek to increase the supply of placements, strengthen commissioning to ensure there are more of the right placements in the right places, and tighten regulation to drive up quality and root out bad practice.

The reforms also seek to promote loving, lifelong relationships for children in care and care leavers, as well as enhance support for care leavers.

Increasing the number of foster carers

From 2021-24, there was a 10% drop in the number of mainstream fostering households – a category that excludes kinship foster carers – from 37,325 to 33,745. And despite mainstream foster care being the largest class of placement for children in care, the number of such placements fell from 44,580 to 42,870 in 2023-24.

Under Stable Homes, the then government allocated £36m, from 2023-25, in regional fostering hubs, designed to provide a single point of contact for people interested in fostering and support them through the process from initial enquiry to application.

The hubs currently cover two-thirds of local authorities. In its 2024 autumn Budget, the Labour government announced funding to extend them to the rest of the country in 2025-26. There is currently no data on the impact of regional fostering hubs, but the ambition set in Stable Homes was that they would support the recruitment of an additional 9,000 foster carers.

Increasing the number of children’s home places

In contrast to the number of fostering households, the number of mainstream children’s homes rose by 44% from 2020-24, with the number of registered places growing by 28% (from 10,033 to 12,870) over the same period.

However, there are significant disparities in the distribution of homes and places between regions. For example, 22% of places were in the North West, above that region’s share of looked-after children (18%).

Also, the number of placements in secure children’s homes has fallen, with councils placing 74 children in welfare secure beds (as of March 2024), down from 97 five years previously. This is despite Ofsted reporting that 50 children are waiting for a secure bed on any one day. (For the past 10 years, more children have been placed in secure beds for welfare reasons than for youth justice reasons. In the year to March 2024, 56 children were placed in secure accommodation by the youth custody service, and 9 by LAs in a criminal justice context.)

In response to issues in the supply of children’s homes, the Conservative government allocated £259m from 2022-25 and then £165m from 2024-28 to develop and maintain secure and open children’s homes Labour then found an extra £90m for expanding and renovating the children’s homes estate for 2024-25, in its 2024 autumn Budget.

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Regionalising commissioning

Increasing supply on its own will not ensure that the right placements are available in the right areas to meet each child’s unique needs; that requires high-quality commissioning by local authorities. However, in its 2022 report on children’s social care, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that the current commissioning landscape made it extremely difficult for this to happen.

Individual councils were responsible for relatively few placements, the numbers of which fluctuated significantly from year to year because of the inherent unpredictability of need. Councils lacked the capacity to effectively forecast future demand and did not collaborate with neighbours to collectively assess how many placements would be needed in their wider region over time. As a result, providers lacked the confidence to invest in provision, given the risk of places lying empty, while it was not worth individual councils’ while to block contract services and fund beds that were not filled.

Drawing on the recommendations of the CMA and the care review, the Conservatives proposed commissioning placements regionally through so-called regional care co-operatives (RCCs). By pooling the knowledge and expertise of their member authorities, they would be better able to forecast demand across the region, signal to providers what was needed and invest in the provision through block contracts. RCCs are currently being tested in two regions, the South East and Greater Manchester, where they are due to go live in the summer 2025, following a preparatory phase.

However, in Keeping Children Safe, the Labour government signalled its intent to roll out the model. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes provisions enabling the government to direct councils to pool the following functions:

• assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of looked-after children;
• developing and publishing strategies for meeting those requirements;
• commissioning the provision of accommodation;
• recruiting and supporting local authority foster parents;
• developing, or facilitating the development of, new accommodation for looked-after children;
• any other functions related to local authority’s duties to accommodate looked-after children specified by the government.

Each RCC would be set up under one of three models:

1. Constituent councils carrying out the specified functions jointly.
2. One council carrying out the functions on behalf of all of the others.
3. A separate body being set up to support the councils in carrying out their functions.

Tackling gaps in provision through a new deprivation of liberty order

The last few years have seen a huge rise in the number of children made subject to deprivation of liberty (DoL) orders under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court – its backstop power to protect vulnerable people.

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In a 2023 report, think-tank the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory attributed the rise in DoL orders to the following factors:

• The lack of available places in secure children’s homes where children can be deprived of their liberty under section 25 of the Children Act 1989 if they are likely to abscond from any other form of accommodation and would likely suffer significant harm in that event. Ofsted has stated that, on any one day, 50 children are waiting for a secure home bed.
• Children referred to secure children’s homes having become more complex needs, leading to homes turning them away.t
• A fall in the number of inpatient child mental health beds – where children may be deprived of their liberty under the Mental Health Act 1983 – despite rising demand.
• A reduction in the number of children placed in youth custody, meaning some children who previously would have been detained are being deprived of their liberty via other routes.
• An increased awareness among local authorities about the need to apply to the court for permission to restrict the liberty of children.
• A considerable increase in the number of older children and young people coming into care over the past decade and some evidence that the care system is struggling to fully meet their needs.

Due to the shortage of registered provision, many children subject to DoL orders have been placed in unregistered settings – without Ofsted oversight. Though this is illegal, the Supreme Court, in the Re T [2021] case, has ruled that such placements are permissible in cases of “urgent necessity”, where there is no alternative way of safeguarding the child.

To address this issue, the government will – through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – legislate to create a new type of registered accommodation for this cohort of children.

Alongside the new placement type, the government intends to support local authorities to work with the NHS and the justice sector to jointly commission provision for this group of children (Keeping Children Safe). This will be tested by the South East regional care co-operative.

Tackling unregistered provision of children’s homes

Children being placed in unregistered homes is a growing issue that goes beyond the use of DoL orders. According to Ofsted, there was a sevenfold increase in the number of children placed in unregistered homes from 2020-21. The regulator has also found that unregistered homes were typically of “poor quality”.

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In Keeping Children Safe, the government said that councils reported using unregistered provision due to an insufficiency of registered placements.

While it said its wider reforms were designed to tackle this, it also unveiled plans to make it easier for Ofsted to take swifter enforcement action against providers of unregistered homes.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would enable Ofsted to impose monetary penalties for breaches of the Care Standards Act 2000, including for providers operating unregistered children’s homes. This is designed to give it a quicker alternative to prosecution in these cases.

Improving support for care leavers

Both Stable Homes and Keeping Children Safe raised significant concerns about the poor outcomes faced by care leavers in areas including access to affordable housing, financial vulnerability and being in employment, education or training.

Under Stable Homes, the Conservatives increased the recommended minimum setting up allowance – which councils are expected under statutory guidance to pay care leavers to help them set up their first home – from £2,000 to £3,000. This was backed by £26.7m from 2023-25.

It also expanded the Staying Close scheme, which provides support to care leavers around housing, employment and wellbeing, from 20 to 47 local authorities, who received £22m for this purpose in 2024-25. This will now become a requirement for all local authorities, through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

This would require each local authority to consider whether each former relevant child (up to age 25) requires “staying close support” and where their welfare requires it, to offer that support. “Staying close support” is defined as the provision of advice, information and representation: to find and keep suitable accommodation and to access services relating to health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment and participating in society.

Fostering lifelong relationships for care experienced people

Stable Homes also highlighted the importance of children in care and care leavers maintaining loving relationships throughout their lives. To that end, it allocated £30m to expanding schemes that support family finding, befriending and mentoring for care experienced people. This was allocated in July 2024, with 23 councils sharing the resource to deliver the Lifelong Links programme. This included 11 that were already delivering the scheme.

Lifelong Links, which was developed by charity Family Rights Group, involves an independent co-ordinator working with the child or young person to find out who is important to them and whom they would like to get in touch with. The co-ordinator then searches for these people and arranges a family group conference involving them and the young person, at which a plan is developed to foster these relationships. The scheme was positively evaluated under the DfE’s innovation programme for children’s social care.

Tackling profit levels

There are longstanding concerns that some large providers – particularly of children’s homes – have been making excessive profits from the care of children and driving up costs for councils. In its 2022 report, the CMA found that, among the largest 15 providers, profit margins averaged 22.6% in residential care and 19.4% in fostering – higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market, it said.

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In Keeping Children Safe, the government vowed to “bring a swift end to excessive and exploitative profit making in a sector which supports our most vulnerable children”. It believes that its measures to improve commissioning – through RCCs – and tighten regulation will have an impact on profit levels. The government said it would also “engage with the sector to bring about greater cost and price transparency which will aid local authorities in challenging profiteering providers, as well as enabling greater central government oversight of the placements market”.

If these measures do not succeed in tackling profiteering, the government has pledged to implement provisions in the bill that would allow it to cap any profit made by a non-local authority registered children’s social care provider. “We will allow time for our other market reforms to rebalance the market first and will only step in to cap profits if this does not happen,” it stressed, in Keeping Children Safe.

However, the CMA rejected the case for capping prices or profits on the grounds that it would reduce incentives for providers to invest in services and cut capacity further.

Enablers: leaders drive conditions for effective practice and the workforce is equipped and effective

Underlying the four outcomes set out in the children’s social care national framework are the three enablers:

1. Multi-agency working is prioritised and effective.
2. Leaders drive conditions for effective practice.
3. The workforce is equipped and effective.

The first is a significant element of the reforms designed to improve child protection, for example, through the creation of multi-agency teams. There is also a tranche of policies that fall under the other two enablers:

Reducing use of agency staff through introducing rules on their use

Stable Homes included plans to restrict the use of agency social workers within local authority children’s services through the introduction of rules on their use. The rules are designed to reduce councils’ reliance on agency staff and the costs of them doing so, saving them money and improving continuity of support for children.

This aligns with the expectation in the national framework that leaders “prioritise a stable and permanent workforce and only employ agency social workers as a temporary measure when absolutely necessary, so that children, young people and families can maintain consistent relationships with practitioners”.

The core six rules are set out in statutory guidance meaning they should comply with them other than in exceptional circumstances. These state that:

1. Councils should work within regions to agree and implement maximum hourly pay rates for agency practitioners (including employers’ national insurance contributions and holiday pay) in each of the following roles: social worker, senior social worker, advanced practitioner, team manager and independent reviewing officer/conference chair.
2. In all contractual arrangements to supply social workers through project teams or packaged arrangements, all workers are identified and approved by the local authority in advance, costs are disaggregated for each worker and any other service and councils maintain complete control of practice.
3. Notice periods for agency social workers should be four weeks or in line with that for permanent social workers in the same or equivalent roles where the latter is shorter.
4. Councils should not engage social workers as locums within three months of them leaving a permanent post in the same region.
5. Councils should only use agency social workers with a minimum of three years’ post-qualifying experience in direct employment of an English local authority in children’s services. Periods of statutory leave (such as maternity and sick leave, as well as annual leave) taken as part of continuous employment count towards post-qualifying experience and the three years can be gained through several periods of employment.
6. Councils should provide a detailed practice-based reference, using a standard national template, for all agency social workers they engage and require at least two such references before taking on a locum.

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Since 31 October 2024, councils have been expected to follow all of these rules, except the first – on hourly pay caps – for all new agency social work assignments, except where contractually prohibited. By 1 October 2025, these rules must be in force for all assignments. In June and July 2025, councils will be expected to agree price caps within their regions, submitting these to the DfE by 1 August 2025, and then implementing on 1 October 2025.

Besides these rules, councils must (by law) supply the DfE with quarterly data on each agency social work assignment and on their use of locums generally. Assignment data must include the role type, hourly pay rate, start and end dates, the social worker’s registration number and details of whether they are part of project teams or packaged models.

General data must include the local authority’s degree of compliance with each rule, explanations for non-compliance, details of price cap breaches, including who signed them off, a list of agencies whose behaviour affected rule compliance and the total monthly cost of the agency workforce.

From 1 January 2025, councils must start collecting data for the quarterly collection, with the first submission, covering the first quarter of 2025, due in April or May 2025.

Alongside the rules, the DfE has published a suite of resources to help local authorities implement them. These include:

• a self-assessment tool to help councils determine their readiness to implement the rules;
• an action plan template setting out what is required of councils under each rule and enabling authorities to track progress on fulfilling these requirements;
• a checklist for councils on meeting the DfE’s data collection requirements;
• an induction checklist for each agency social work assignment, to ensure compliance with the rules;
• an audit tool to assess how far existing contracts comply with the rules.

Introducing an early career framework

Based on the recommendations of the care review, Stable Homes announced plans to develop a five-year early career framework (ECF) for local authority children’s services social workers joining the profession. The ECF would provide newly qualified local authority children’s social workers with two years of “high-quality support and development” that would replace the existing 12-month assessed and supported year in employment (ASYE) in children’s services.

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In years three to five of the ECF, social workers would be supported to become “expert practitioners”, to create “a cohort of highly trained social workers capable of dealing with the most complex cases and spreading best practice”. An example of this specialism would be the lead child protection practitioner (see above).

In Stable Homes, the Conservatives outlined a plan to appoint a group of early adopter councils to help develop and test the ECF, along with an expert writing group to produce the knowledge and skills framework underlying it. It said it would consult, as necessary, on a draft framework from autumn 2023, with a view to implementing the ECF in September 2026.

The DfE appointed an initial eight early adopters in September 2023, and put a call out for other organisations to join them in March 2024, though did not subsequently report on whether any had been appointed. It has also appointed the expert writing group, according to a response to a Freedom of Information request made by Joe Hanley, lecturer in social work at Open University, in May 2024. But there has been no consultation as yet on a draft knowledge and skills framework, while the framework was not mentioned in Keeping Children Safe.

The DfE is expected to give an update about early career support in a session for Social Work England’s social work week on 20 March 2025. This page will be updated with any new information.

Tackling unnecessary drivers of social work workload

In Stable Homes, the then government pledged action to tackle “unnecessary workload pressures [on social workers] that do not lead to improvements in outcomes for children and families”. It subsequently appointed a national workload action group, consisting of sector leaders, to develop solutions to these pressures and produce resources for local authorities in putting these into practice.

After the July 2024 election, the Labour government confirmed that it would continue with this work. The group is due to finalise its resources by the end of March 2025 and they will subsequently be published by the DfE.