Councillors due to get update on Cumberland Council’s children’s social care service
Members of the council’s people overview and scrutiny committee are due to meet at Cumbria House in Carlisle next week over the reforms
Councillors are due to get an update on the reforms within Cumberland Council’s children’s social care service next week.
Members of the council’s people overview and scrutiny committee are due to meet at Cumbria House in Carlisle on Friday (November 7).
They will consider a report – Children’s Social Care Reforms: Families First Partnership Programme – which states that the reforms began with the Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy in 2023.
According to the report The Families First Partnership Programme, launched by the Department for Education (DfE) in March 2025, is the delivery mechanism for these reforms.
It adds: “Its aim is to create a joined-up, family-focused system that intervenes earlier, strengthens families, and improves child protection.”
It is recommended that members support the programme as the key delivery mechanism for reforms and recognise this as ‘the most significant change since the Children Act 1989’ which requires sustained commitment and cultural change.
In addition, they are asked to champion local implementation, advocate for adequate funding and workforce capacity to deliver the transformation, request regular progress reports and engage with communities and partners to explain why these changes matter keeping families together, improving outcomes, and reducing reliance on care.
The report states: “The Families First Partnership Programme is the delivery mechanism for implementing the core changes set out in the Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy and embedded in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill launched by the DfE in March 2025 to deliver the children’s social care reforms.
“The purpose is to create a joined-up, family-focused system that intervenes earlier, strengthens families, and improves child protection. In March 2025 DfE published the programme guide which set out the delivery expectations and clarified local flexibility.
“10 local authorities were part of the pathfinder programme which was launched to test and learn how the core reforms (Family Help, Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, and Family Group Decision Making) work in practice before national rollout.”
According to the report the council received £742,581 as part of the Preventative Grant in April 2025. The report adds: “This grant is a direct investment in additional preventative activity for children and families through the implementation of Family Help and Child Protection reforms, it is also to fund local authorities against the new legislative duty to offer family group decision making. This grant is ringfenced for direct investment.”
The funding had to be used in the following ways:
30 per cent must be used on transformation activity;
Local authorities to mandate family group decision making;
Support multi-agency workforce delivery; and
Implementation of lead practitioners and Multi Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs).