Legislating to keep families together and children safe, and to remove barriers opportunity

As of November 2024, the Government has announced they intend to reform the social care system. New rules and regulations have been put forward with an aim to widen opportunities for families to remain together.

To summarise the Government has proposed the following changes:

• To ensure family group decision making meetings take place. These are family-led meetings that let the family network come together to discuss and understand the concerns regarding the child’s wellbeing. Family group conferences are now also being pushed to take place prior to proceedings being issued. Research has shown that conducting family group conferences at the pre-proceedings stage meant that care proceedings were statistically less likely to be initiated[1].
• To improve the sharing of information across agencies with a Single Unique Identifier. It is currently lawful to share information without consent in order to safeguard and protect the welfare of child, but professionals often only feel confident doing this when there are serious child protection concerns. Therefore, a new duty is set to be introduced that provides much more certainty on the legal basis to share information for the purposes of safeguarding children[2].
• There is set to be a removal of barriers for opportunities for children in care. This is set to be achieved by increasing the corporate parenting duties of the Local Authority and to incorporate a range of public bodies such as housing, health, education and employment services.
• To extend the duty on local authorities to promote educational outcomes for children with a social worker. This is to be promoted through the use of Virtual School Heads (VSH). Their role would be to use their expertise to support children in overcoming barriers in attending school.

These are just some proposals for change to improve the social care system. If social services become involved in relation to your children, then w e may be able to help. Please contact Johnson Astills at either our Leicester office on 0116 255 4855 or our Loughborough office on 01509 610 312 and ask or a member of the Care Team. Alternatively you contact us through our free online enquiry form or email us at careteam@johnsonastills.com and a member of our team will be happy to assist you.