The government is proposing to transform children’s social care to rebalance the system towards early intervention through family help and strengthened multi-agency child protection.
The aim is to offer every child the best start in life with safety, security, and opportunities to achieve and thrive. This means over the next 12 to 18 months, Enfield’s Children's Social Care will change how we operate and deliver services to local children and families. Key components of this reform include building on the strengths of existing universal and community based early help delivery models, to create an integrated family help service, with early help practitioners and social workers in the same team working to a single assessment and plan.
In addition, child protection reform will be introduced to establish local Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs). These multi-disciplinary teams will include a minimum of social care, police, health and education professionals undertaking statutory child protection investigations and interventions, offering a local and accessible centre of expertise. There will also be a focus on supporting families with family group decision-making as early as possible, and those parents who are undergoing child protection investigations will be offered advocacy.
The benefits for children, parents and carers will be:
- Interventions will be more timely and non-stigmatising without the need for multiple referrals or assessments with one family assessment and plan
- Professionals from various disciplines, including social workers, alternatively qualified practitioners’, mental health specialists, and domestic abuse experts, will collaborate more to address the diverse needs of families
- One lead practitioner will work with the family, transfer points between teams and services will reduce, improving parental engagement and positive relationships with lead practitioners
- Families will understand more fully the child protection process through independent advocacy service offered at the point of an investigation being initiated
- Families will be integral to creating and owning the plan for change through early family decision making meetings at the point of referral
Further information can be found by reading the government statement Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive – DfE, November 2024 (PDF). Your experience and insights are essential in helping shape the future of family services in Enfield so we are launching our social care reform consultation, which will be running from July to August 2025.
We invite you to get involved by sharing your experiences, ideas, and recommendations on what you think the local transformation of family services should look like. We want to know what you think is working well and where there are opportunities for better integration. This is your chance to help us co-design and co-produce the service, and your engagement and feedback will play a crucial role in shaping how we implement the social care reforms in Enfield.
There are several ways in which you can participate and get involved:
- Share your views and ideas by emailing us at strategicsocialcare@enfield.gov.uk
- Complete our Children and Families Social Care survey
For further information, visit Children's Portal - Enfield Children and Families Social Care Consultation.