CONSULTATION- Improving Help and Child Protection: A Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity to Get Safeguarding Right
The Department for Education has launched a consultation on proposals to update key safeguarding frameworks, including Working Together to Safeguard Children, the Children's Social Care National Framework, and the policy underpinning new Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams. The consultation forms part of the government's wider programme of children's social care reform and seeks views on how services can better support children and families through earlier intervention, stronger partnerships, and more effective child protection arrangements.
The proposals focus on five key areas:
Strengthening Family Help services and family network involvement.
Improving multi-agency child protection arrangements.
Developing Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams.
Strengthening independent scrutiny and continuous improvement.
Supporting more effective decision-making across safeguarding partners.
While these changes may appear technical or structural on the surface, they represent something much bigger.
They represent an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we protect children.
Moving From Crisis Response to Early Support
For many years, professionals across education, health, social care, police, and voluntary services have highlighted the challenges of systems that often respond when risks have already escalated.
The government's vision for Family Help aims to create a more seamless approach to supporting children and families earlier, reducing the need for crisis intervention and enabling concerns to be identified before they reach child protection thresholds.
This reflects a growing recognition that safeguarding is not simply about responding to harm.
It is about preventing harm.
Early support has the potential to improve outcomes for children, reduce pressure on statutory services, and strengthen family resilience. However, achieving this will require more than changing terminology or structures.
It will require investment in relationships, professional confidence, and multi-agency collaboration.
The Promise of Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams
One of the most significant proposals is the development of Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, bringing together social workers, police, health professionals, and education representatives to strengthen decision-making and improve protection for children at risk.
In principle, this is an exciting development.
For years, safeguarding professionals have spoken about the need to move beyond siloed working and towards genuinely integrated approaches.
When information is shared effectively, risks are identified sooner. When professionals understand each other's roles, decision-making becomes stronger. When agencies work together around the child, rather than expecting the child to navigate multiple systems, outcomes improve.
The challenge will be ensuring that these teams do not become another layer of bureaucracy but instead create meaningful opportunities for collaboration and professional challenge.
Family Networks Must Be More Than a Tick Box Exercise
The consultation also places significant emphasis on strengthening the role of family networks and wider support systems around children.
This aligns with the wider direction of travel across children's social care reform, recognising that families often hold strengths, relationships, and protective factors that can be mobilised to support children safely.
However, involving family networks must be done thoughtfully.
Professionals must remain curious about family dynamics, power imbalances, domestic abuse, coercion, and hidden risks. Family involvement should strengthen safeguarding rather than dilute professional accountability.
Done well, family network approaches can be transformative.
Done poorly, they can unintentionally place children at greater risk.
Why This Consultation Matters
Whilst much of the attention around children's social care reform has focused on the broader vision for earlier intervention and stronger family support, the detail within this consultation reveals some significant proposed changes to safeguarding practice and statutory responsibilities.
Among the proposals are plans to remove targeted early help as a distinct service area and bring all Family Help provision under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. The consultation also sets out the proposed role and functions of new Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, places greater emphasis on Family Networks as part of decision-making and support planning, and includes notable changes to how allegations against professionals and volunteers may be managed, including the future role of the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO).
These are not minor operational adjustments. They have the potential to reshape how safeguarding partners work together, how thresholds are applied, how support is provided to families, and how professional accountability is maintained across the safeguarding system.
For safeguarding leaders, designated safeguarding leads, social workers, education providers, health professionals, police colleagues, charities and voluntary sector organisations, this consultation represents an important opportunity to influence the future direction of child protection and early intervention in England.
At RLB, we would strongly encourage professionals to read the proposals in full, consider the practical implications for their sector, and contribute their views. Changes of this scale will affect frontline practice for years to come, making it essential that those working directly with children and families help shape the final framework.
The consultation closes on 4 September 2026.
Our Perspective
At RLB, we welcome the ambition behind these proposals.
Many of the principles underpinning the consultation reflect what safeguarding professionals have been advocating for years: earlier intervention, stronger partnerships, better information sharing, and child-centred decision-making.
However, successful reform is not measured by new structures.
It is measured by whether children are safer.
As safeguarding leaders, we should be asking:
Will these changes improve professional curiosity?
Will practitioners have more time to build meaningful relationships with children and families?
Will information sharing become easier?
Will children's voices be heard more effectively?
Will agencies feel confident to challenge one another when concerns arise?
If the answer to those questions is yes, then we have the foundations for meaningful change.
If not, there is a risk that reform becomes another organisational exercise rather than a transformational improvement in safeguarding practice.
Looking Ahead
Children's social care is experiencing the most significant reform in a generation. The consultation provides a valuable opportunity for safeguarding professionals, education providers, health partners, voluntary organisations, and families to influence what the future of child protection looks like.
The ambition is clear.
A system that intervenes earlier.
A system that works together more effectively.
A system that places children and families at its heart.
The challenge now is ensuring that ambition translates into practice.
Because ultimately, safeguarding reform should not be judged by policies written or structures created.
It should be judged by whether children are safer, heard, and better supported to thrive.
Consultation links
Improving help and child protection: revised framework
Improving help and child protection : revised framework (Children and young person's version)