Statement on the Government announcement to speed up children’s social care reforms

The Government’s announcement of accelerated reforms to children’s social care, including an additional £18 million for early intervention and the expansion of family help workers, signals a renewed focus on prevention and earlier support for families. The roll-out of Family Group Decision Making, investment in multi-agency safeguarding panels, and a commitment to unique identifiers to improve information sharing are all welcome developments.

We have long championed whole-system responses to safeguarding and prevention. We welcome any shift towards supporting families earlier, but we must ensure these reforms go deeper than identifying challenges such as substance use or poor mental health and consider what meaningful responses to these challenges should look like.

Too often, in our Domestic Abuse-Related Death Reviews and other safeguarding reviews, we see these “symptoms” treated as individual problems, easily located within parents or families, rather than recognising the broader structural challenges they face. Poverty, insecure housing, discrimination, trauma, and the long-term disinvestment in vital public services are not background noise – they are the conditions in which many families are trying to survive.

We are concerned that the specific impact of violence and abuse appears largely absent from the reforms. Domestic abuse in particular is a key driver of harm for both children and parents, yet it is rarely named explicitly here. Research consistently shows that parents navigating mental ill-health, substance use, housing insecurity, and poverty are disproportionately likely to have experienced violence or abuse themselves. These experiences are not separate from the challenges the reforms aim to address, they are often at their core.

Substance use and poor mental health are, in many cases, symptomatic of trauma and systemic inequality. Early intervention must therefore be paired with access to robust, specialist services in mental health, drug and alcohol support, domestic abuse, sexual violence, and beyond. These are vital services. They are as fundamental to children’s safety and wellbeing as children’s services themselves, because the ability of parents to recover, stabilise, and parent safely depends on them.

At present, too many of these services, particularly in the voluntary and community sector, are already stretched to breaking point, with high thresholds, long waiting lists, and workforce shortages. The recent National Insurance increases for charities risk further weakening the very organisations expected to deliver this specialist, life-saving work. Funding and capacity for the adult services that address violence, abuse, and trauma must be seen as a central part of children’s social care reform, not an optional extra.

The Children’s Minister acknowledged that these are “deep-rooted problems” in a children’s social care system under immense strain. We would add: they are not the only public services under such pressure. Health, housing, policing, and the specialist voluntary sector all operate in a climate of increased need, static or shrinking budgets, and rising costs. Without sustained investment in this wider system, prevention will be undermined before it begins.

If we are to see meaningful change, these reforms must not only join up children’s services, but also strengthen alignment between the children’s and adults’ sectors. Families’ lives do not split neatly along service boundaries, yet too often, responses still do. Greater integration between adult mental health, drug and alcohol, domestic abuse, housing, and children’s services is essential to avoid fragmented support.

This investment is an important step, but prevention will only be effective if it addresses both the immediate needs of families and the wider systems that create and sustain harm. Family help workers can and should be a vital part of that, but they must be supported by a well-resourced, specialist, and joined-up network of services that tackle root causes, not just symptoms.

At the Centre for Safer Society, we will continue to use the evidence from our reviews, research, and partnerships to advocate for reforms that work for all families, and for a system that sees the whole picture, not just the presenting problem.