Department of Education: Child Protection Framework Consultation
In June 2026, the Department for Education launched its consultation, Improving Help and Child Protection: Revised Framework, as part of the Government’s wider reform of children’s social care. The consultation seeks views on changes to Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, the Children’s Social Care National Framework 2026, and the regulations which will underpin new multi-agency child protection teams. The consultation is substantial. It contains 41 questions across five sections and covers the voice of children and families, multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, Family Help, child protection and improving outcomes for children in care and care leavers. At its heart is a question familiar to those working in the family law arena: how can the system intervene more effectively without allowing children and families to become lost between agencies and services?
Earlier Help and a Clearer Statutory Foundation
One of the most significant proposals concerns Family Help. The Government intends to move towards a single, seamless service rather than maintaining a distinction between Targeted Early Help and support for children in need.
At present, child in need services have a clear statutory foundation under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, whereas Targeted Early Help largely operates through the broader co-operation and safeguarding duties contained in sections 10 and 11 of the Children Act 2004. The DfE acknowledges that this distinction can produce local thresholds, handovers between services, and inconsistent family support. The proposal is therefore that all Family Help should be delivered under section 17 Children Act 1989, creating a single statutory framework for children and families requiring this level of assistance. The Government argues that this would clarify accountability and reduce divisions between early help and statutory intervention.
The consultation also emphasises the importance of family networks. Family Group Decision Making and Family Network Support Packages are intended to identify others who can provide practical support before difficulties escalate or a child enters care. Emerging evidence from the Government’s pilots suggests such packages strengthen family networks and reduce escalation. This direction broadly reflects longstanding thinking in social work and the family law jurisprudence.
There are, however, important cautions. Section 17 support must remain a legal entitlement rather than becoming dependent upon local resources. Further, there are concerns that bringing more families within a statutory social care framework could inadvertently increase stigma or create a situation where parents are less willing to seek help.
Multi-Agency Child Protection
A central feature of the reforms is the creation of multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority area, following the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. The proposal responds directly to findings from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and the national review following the murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson. Those reviews identified recurring failures including information-sharing, fragmented multi-agency decision-making, and a framework ill-equipped to address harm outside the family home.[1]
The proposed multi-agency child protection teams would have a significant operational role. The consultation envisages them providing specialist advice, determining whether threshold is met, convening strategy discussions and child protection conferences, overseeing section 47 investigations and child protection plans, and contributing to decisions concerning pre-proceedings. There is considerable attraction in making child protection genuinely multi-agency rather than expecting social care to obtain input sequentially from police, health, and education.
Debate around the reforms has highlighted concerns about recruitment, workload, and partner-agency capacity and funding, particularly given existing shortages within social work, policing, and the NHS. No framework can improve outcomes by itself, effective safeguarding ultimately depends upon practitioner confidence, leadership, information-sharing, and professional curiosity – when correctly funded to allow for the latter qualities to prevail in practice.
Addressing Longstanding Gaps in Protection
Perhaps the clearest example of the framework attempting to address a recognised weakness is extra-familial harm. Traditional child protection processes developed principally around abuse and neglect within the home. That model can sit awkwardly where a child is being exploited by peers, criminal networks, or adults in the community or online.[2] The Independent Review concluded that the existing system was not working effectively for extra-familial harm and could leave parents feeling blamed for risks they had not created and sought to protect their children from.[3] Academic work on contextual safeguarding has similarly argued that meaningful reform requires attention to the environments in which harm occurs rather than simply transplanting conventional parent-focused child protection processes into extra-familial cases.
The consultation reflects this; it asks whether guidance should require greater attention to contextual drivers of harm, treat parents as partners where appropriate, apply section 47 consistently to extra-familial risks and impose clearer responsibilities on agencies capable of making schools, public spaces, and online environments safer. Importantly, it recognises that care proceedings may be an ineffective form of escalation where the source of danger is outside the family. The DfE is also considering clearer guidance for safeguarding looked-after children and children in kinship care, an updated definition of child sexual exploitation, and the adequacy of the framework where children themselves present a risk of violence.
Child Voice, Accountability and Relationships
The DfE acknowledges that, although listening to children is already a core principle of safeguarding guidance, local reports often describe meaningful participation as an aspiration rather than something demonstrably embedded in decision-making. It therefore proposes stronger requirements to show how children’s lived experiences influence safeguarding priorities, scrutiny and service improvement. Independent scrutiny will also be strengthened following concerns about inconsistent authority, limited access to information, and an excessive focus on procedural assurance rather than outcomes. The aim is for scrutiny to provide meaningful challenge rather than simply another layer of reporting.
Finally, the consultation considers whether the national framework sufficiently promotes enduring relationships for looked-after children and care leavers. The Government is exploring whether the existing outcome should be divided so that the needs of children in care and those leaving care receive distinct attention.[4]
What Happens Next?
The broad direction of travel is difficult to dispute. Earlier support, stronger family networks, experienced child protection practitioners, multi-agency responsibility, and a framework capable of responding to harm wherever it occurs. The more difficult question is whether the reforms can overcome problems which are not problems of guidance. Across socio-legal and safeguarding commentary, practitioners will be familiar with the recurring concern being resources, workforce stability, meaningful family participation, and the danger of replacing one set of procedural boundaries with another.
Responses to the consultation can be submitted until 4 September 2026, with the Government’s response expected in autumn 2026 and revised statutory guidance and multi-agency child protection teams regulations anticipated in 2027.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-review-into-the-murders-of-arthur-labinjo-hughes-and-star-hobson
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-audit-on-group-based-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/families-first-for-children-ffc-pathfinder-programme/families-first-for-children-ffc-pathfinder-programme-and-family-networks-pilot-fnp
