Children’s services leaders should ensure practitioners’ workloads are “reasonable”, under revised government guidance.
This marks a toughening up of the Department for Education’s (DfE) expectations of councils in relation to workload compared with the original version of the Children’s Social Care National Framework, which was published in December 2023..
The DfE has also asked authorities in England to place greater emphasis on anti-discriminatory and culturally aware practice in children’s services, in the revised version of the guidance, which was published last month.
The framework sets out the government’s key objectives for children’s social care and how these should be achieved. This is articulated through statements setting out expectations for local authority senior leaders, middle managers (referred to as ‘practice supervisors’) and practitioners, including social workers.
As statutory guidance, councils must comply with it other than in exceptional circumstances.
Key children’s social care objectives unchanged
There are no changes in the updated framework to the four key outcomes, and the three enablers for achieving them, that the DfE has set out for the children’s social care system:
- Outcome 1: children, young people and families stay together and get the help they need.
- Outcome 2: children and young people are safe in and outside of their homes (previously outcome 3).
- Outcome 3: children and young people are supported by their family network (previously outcome 2).
- Outcome 4: children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes.
- Enabler: multi-agency working is prioritised and effective.
- Enabler: leaders drive conditions for effective practice.
- Enabler: the workforce is equipped and effective.
However, though much of the content is substantially the same, some significant changes have been made.
Practitioners ‘should have reasonable workloads’
The original framework said that leaders should be “mindful of practitioner workloads, including both the number of children and young people they are supporting, and the complexity of their family dynamics”, under the enabler of having an equipped and effective workforce.
However, in the revised version, the DfE has gone further by stating that leaders should ensure workload is “reasonable for practitioners”.
The shift follows last year’s report of the DfE-commissioned national workload action group (NWAG), which said safe working limits were needed to stop children’s social workers leaving the profession. The group urged the department to urgently commission work to determine safe workload limits, which it said should be followed by a review of the sufficiency of the children’s social work workforce.
In response, the DfE acknowledged that workload was an “urgent challenge that needs ongoing attention” and pledged to work with the sector “to explore how to better support social work leaders in managing caseloads effectively” and share good practice.
The department has posted resources on managing workloads, developed by Research in Practice as part of the NWAG project, on the DfE’s Support for social workers platform. However, it has not addressed the NWAG’s calls for safe working limits.
Leaders made more responsible for practice culture
The revised framework also places greater responsibility on leaders to foster a positive practice culture than the original version, as part of the enablers of having an equipped and effective workforce and driving conditions for effective practice.
In the original version, practice supervisors – but not leaders – were expected to “develop a culture of learning and improvement” where staff were “sufficiently supported, stretched, and mentored to meet their aspirations”, and to provide a “safe, calm, and well-ordered environment for all staff”.
In the revised framework, these expectations are placed on senior leaders instead.
Increased emphasis on anti-discriminatory practice
There is also significantly greater emphasis on culturally aware practice and on tackling discrimination and disproportionality in practice in the revised version compared to the original framework.
The 2023 framework said that leaders, supervisors and practitioners should “address discrimination and promote equality”, with frontline staff also asked to be “mindful” of how discrimination may affect children and families’ experience of services and to recognise how their own beliefs may influence their practice. There are no references to anti-discriminatory practice, race or cultural background, however.
By contract, the revised version states, in relation to outcome 2, on safeguarding, that practitioners should “assess actual or likely significant harm through an anti-racist, anti-discriminatory and culturally aware lens”. This should involve “applying knowledge of faith, beliefs and family cultures that can positively and negatively impact on children, whilst maintaining a core focus on the safety and wellbeing of the child”.
Meanwhile, leaders are told they should “identify and address patterns of discrimination, and the factors contributing to it, where some groups of children and families, for example those from minority ethnic backgrounds, are over or under-represented in service responses”.
In addition, with respect to outcome 1, on family support, the 2026 framework says practitioners should “work confidently and respectfully with children and families from diverse groups, with an active awareness that bias, discrimination, or prejudiced assumptions about protected characteristics, cultural norms, and care experience can lead to disproportionate or insufficient levels of intervention”.
The revised framework also has a stronger emphasis on challenging inequalities within the workforce. While the original version urged leaders to “reflect on the diversity of their workforce so it reflects and can meet the needs of the local area”, the updated framework says they should also take “proactive steps to address disparities across the hierarchy”.
Reflecting policy change
The framework has also been updated to reflect policy changes made since the original version was published in December 2023, when the last Conservative government was in power.
This includes the implementation of the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme, which started being rolled out across England last year and is the most significant part of the DfE’s children’s social care reform programme. Backed by £2.4bn over the next three years, it includes three elements:
- Multidisciplinary family help services: these are responsible for supporting families across targeted early help, child in need and child protection, through the provision of a consistent lead practitioner and a team around the family, with the objective of keeping families intact where it is safe to do so.
- Multi-agency child protection teams: these are designed to improve the quality of safeguarding practice by bringing together skilled social workers, police officers, health practitioners and education professionals into single teams, an approach that will be put into law through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
- Family group decision making (FGDM) meetings: these involve giving extended families the opportunity to hold meetings and develop plans to safeguard and promote the welfare of children involved with early help or social care; under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, councils will be required to offer such meetings to families at the pre-proceedings stage, to enable them to develop alternatives to children going into care. However, the DfE wants councils to use them at all stages of the children’s social care process.
Family group decision making ‘should be bedrock of practice’
The original framework only referenced FGDM under the outcome on children being supported by their family network (outcome 3), and styled it as one option that leaders, supervisors and practitioners could use to support family involvement in decision making.
By contrast, the revised version is much more prescriptive about the use of FGDM, with practitioners, supervisors and senior leaders directed to use it in relation to involving families in decision making, with leaders urged to make it “the bedrock of practice”.
It is also referenced in relation to outcomes 1, on supporting families, and 4, on children in care and care leavers having stable, loving homes.
In relation to the former, practitioners are urged to “[offer]” opportunities for family group decision making at all relevant points”, when working with families. With regards to the latter, the DfE says they should facilitate FGDM “to identify safe, loving homes for children who cannot live with their own immediate family”.
A slimmed-down document
As well as the substantive changes, the DfE has significantly slimmed down the framework.
While previously, the outcomes and enablers sections took up 44 pages, they are now down to 28 pages.
You can ead the revised national framework here.
Source: Community Care, Mithran Samuel
