Case Study: The Families First for Children Pathfinder programme: Supporting the Department for Education and Pathfinders implement vital reforms

Client: Department for Education

Date: June 2023 - Present

Challenges faced by the client:

The Department for Education (DfE) worked with ten Pathfinder areas to implement the Families First for Children Pathfinder (FFCP) reforms by embedding new delivery models outlined in the government’s response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (Care Review).

Mutual Ventures, in partnership with the Innovation Unit, were selected as the DfE’s delivery partner for the FFCP programme.

The FFCP reforms were broken down into four pillars as outline below:

1. Family Help: This pillar focuses on ensuring families can access the right support at the right time. It involves locally based, multi-disciplinary services that provide welcoming, seamless support tailored to the needs of children and families.

2. Child Protection: This pillar aims to safeguard children from harm. It includes multi-agency child protection teams and operational boards that oversee the child protection system, ensuring effective decision-making and practice improvement.

3. Family Networks: This pillar emphasizes the importance of family connections and networks in maintaining stability and support.

4. Multi-Agency Safeguarding Arrangements (MASA): This pillar establishes a system-wide, 'families first' culture, underpinned by clear and shared safeguarding arrangements and effective information-sharing among agencies.

Additionally, during the FFCP programme, the DfE needed to gather evidence to inform on the effectiveness of Family Network Support Packages (FNSPs). These are a pot of funding to enable a family’s network to step in and provide support where there is a financial barrier to them doing so. FNSPs allow children to live safely within their family networks when it is in their best interests to do so.

Pathfinders on the Programme:

Mutual Ventures supported 10 pathfinder areas across two waves to pilot the implementation of their reforms.

• Wave 1: Dorset, Lincolnshire, and Wolverhampton

• Wave 2: Walsall, Luton, Warwickshire, Redbridge, Lewisham, Warrington, and Wirral

• A further 7 areas piloted FNSPs only.

Our support:

The Mutual Ventures team collaborated with the DfE and local authorities to implement and embed the FFCP programme. Our support included:

• Providing comprehensive programme management, including acting as a bridge between the DfE and Pathfinder teams, supporting with reporting processes and documentation, identifying and managing cross-programme risks and other key programme management activities.

• Offering tailored support to Local Authorities to support the implementation of the reforms in a way that reflected and leveraged their local conditions. This included running mobilisation workshops, engaging with local partners and providing direct one-to-one coaching across all levels of the organisation from front-line staff up to DCS level.

• Creating learning spaces to bring together local authorities' teams and partners to share learning, have a protected time to ask questions and share case studies. This includes group coaching sessions and Communities of Practice sessions focusing on key practice and operational topics.

• Developing and running a comprehensive learning programme including delivering in person learning events which brought together representative from all Pathfinder areas to share learning and build relationships with each other and the DfE team.

Outcome achieved:

The FFCP programme successfully launched in July 2023, with ten local authorities implementing the reforms across two waves. The programme facilitated significant improvements across children’s services from the Front Door up to Child Protection.

The tailored support provided by Mutual Ventures and the Innovation Unit ensured that local models were effectively implemented, leading to improved outcomes for children and families within the Pathfinder areas. Following the successful implementation of the reforms the DfE have subsequently announced funding for a full national roll-out of the reforms, commencing from April 2025.

For more information on Mutual Ventures' work as part of the FFCP programme please contact Milo at milo.abraham@mutualventures.co.uk