Case study: Family Justice National Learning Support Programme

Client: Department for Education

Date: September 2025 – March 2026

Challenges faced by the client:

Across England, many Designated Family Judge (DFJ) areas experience sustained delays in care proceedings, with a significant proportion of cases exceeding the 26-week statutory timeframe for completion. Delays in public law proceedings within the family justice system have significant consequences for children and families. These delays can leave children waiting for stability and safety, and place additional strain on families and professionals. While these delays are often driven by local system dynamics, there is a considerable opportunity to learn from what is working well across different areas.

Following the DFJ Trailblazers pilot and the first round of Guided Learning, the Department for Education sought to scale learning nationally. The DfE therefore established the National Learning Support Programme to support DFJ areas across England to:

• Understand the local drivers of delay.

• Learn from what was working elsewhere.

• Share learning across England.

• Strengthen cross-area collaboration and learning to reduce court delays.

Our support:

Mutual Ventures partnered with participating areas to provide tailored, hands-on support. Each DFJ area was assigned a dedicated coach, enabling a consistent and locally tailored approach.

Each areas support began with a diagnostic phase. This combined baseline data analysis with stakeholder interviews to build a robust understanding of the drivers of delay in each local system. From this, areas were supported to identify priority challenges and focus their improvement efforts where they would have the greatest impact.

A core feature of the programme was the emphasis on shared learning. Through targeted workshops, local partners including judges, local authorities, Cafcass, legal and wider system stakeholders came together to sense-check findings and co-design practical solutions to tackle delay. This ensured each local system to have a shared understanding of the core challenges and generated shared ownership of priorities and solutions.

Alongside this local work, Mutual Ventures established a national Community of Practice. This created a structured space for DFJ areas to share live challenges, exchange practical tools, and learn from tested approaches across England. Learning was further captured and disseminated through a suite of resources, including thematic reports, learning briefs, webinars, and good practice guides. These focused on common drivers of delay such as the use of experts, late identification of family members, and court listing practices.

Outcomes achieved:

The programme supported 49 local authorities across 24 DFJ areas to develop a clearer and more consistent understanding of the causes of delay within their local family justice systems. This understanding was strengthened by combining local insight with national learning, enabling areas to situate their challenges within a broader system context.

Importantly, the programme also established a sustainable national learning infrastructure which is accessible to all professionals. The Community of Practice and library of practical resources (including a Good Practice Guide, thematic briefings, LFJB Learning Summary, System Map, and podcast series) enabled areas to share knowledge, build capability, and apply learning beyond the life of the programme.

For more information on MV's work across family justice including care proceedings, see our dedicated webpage.