Hackney Council is implementing significant reforms to its children's social care services, aiming to prioritise early intervention and improve multi-agency collaboration. The Families First Partnership Programme
represents a major overhaul, aligning with national changes designed to shift from reactive, crisis-driven interventions to a more proactive, inclusive, and relationship-based model of support.
Key to these reforms is the establishment of a neighbourhood-based Family Help
service, which consolidates targeted early help and statutory Child in Need social work into a single, seamless offer. This new service, launched in May 2026, operates across four local Children and Family Hubs: Ann Tayler, Daubeney, Linden, and Woodberry Down. Families will remain allocated within their Family Help teams unless a child becomes permanently looked after, at which point there is a carefully managed transfer to the Corporate Parenting service. The Multi-Agency Support Hub (MASH) remains the first point of contact for consultations and new requests for support.
A Child Safeguarding Team
is also being developed, bringing together social workers with safeguarding expertise alongside specialists from the police, health, and education sectors. This team will lead and oversee all child protection responses. The phased implementation of this multi-agency child protection team began with a 'soft launch' on August 10th, 2026. The team will be comprised of Child Protection Leads and will soon be joined by safeguarding experts from the Police, Health, and Education services. Arrangements for multi-disciplinary supervision are currently being developed.
Furthermore, Hackney is strengthening its Family Meeting Service
to empower families and their wider support networks in decision-making processes, a move that aligns with the council's systemic, trauma-informed, and anti-racist (STAR) practice model. This service will have a dual role: facilitating family-led decision-making directly and supporting allocated practitioners to do so when they have an established relationship with a family. The development is supported by external consultants, and the goal is for every intervention to result in a family-led plan with clear guidance.
During a recent Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission meeting, councillors received an update on the implementation of these reforms. Diane Benjamin, Director of Children's Social Care, highlighted the scale of the changes, noting that they are mandated by the Department for Education and represent a significant shift in how services are delivered. Lisa Aldridge, Assistant Director for the Families First Partnership Programme, explained that Hackney has used the reforms as an opportunity to advance its existing vision for children and families, focusing on neighbourhood-based working and building stronger relationships with community and voluntary partners.
Mags Wild, Head of Service for Family Help, acknowledged the challenges faced by practitioners in adapting to new skill sets and operational changes but emphasised the positive reception of neighbourhood working and the enhanced ability to build relationships with local families. To equip practitioners with the necessary skills and confidence, Hackney Council is providing a comprehensive training program. From September 2026, all family-facing practitioners are required to attend a four-day in-person training course on the STAR practice model, spread over four weeks, with follow-up sessions. Additionally, training is being provided through Relational Activism for the new family-led decision-making approach.
The Families First Partnership Programme
grant offers Hackney the opportunity to increase staffing for the service in the short term, until March 2028. The council is being careful to increase staffing in a way that is hoped to be sustainable, as they anticipate a need to return to a cost-neutral position by this date. This presents challenges in hiring staff on a permanent basis. Hackney has raised with the Department for Education the need for clarity on long-term funding arrangements to enable permanent recruitment and ensure continuity of relationships for families.
Specific challenges and potential risks identified in the transition include limited evaluation of the proof of concept, voluntary cooperation from partners without direct funding, workforce restructuring, recruitment and retention difficulties, and the sustainability of staffing beyond March 2028. Changes to the Mosaic case recording system are also time-consuming and will be in development over the next six months.
Hackney Council will use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, alongside co-design with families, to evaluate the outcomes of the Families First Partnership Programme. This includes existing statutory key performance indicators (KPIs) shared with the DFE, as well as additional performance indicators identified by the DFE. The council is also developing its own indicators, some in collaboration with partner agencies, such as those related to extra-familial harm. Qualitative data will be gathered through an internal and multi-agency audit program. The most crucial data will be impact data, collected through ongoing co-design with children and families, and through established parental advisory groups and children's groups like Hackney of Tomorrow. The council is also working on data dashboards for new data collection and will monitor this through existing forums and year-on-year comparisons, while also considering national evaluations. The evaluation framework is comprehensive, with baseline KPI data and new data monitoring dashboards being developed. The effectiveness of the Child Safeguarding Team will be evaluated as part of this broader programme, with the overall timeframe for seeing the impact of these reforms estimated to be 12 to 18 months. The effectiveness and impact of the Family Meeting Service will also be evaluated, with an evaluation of the family-led meeting approach commissioned and expected within the next year or two.
The 'Family Help' service is also establishing a specialist team, the 'Safer Paths - Preventing Harm Outside the Home Team,' to support children most vulnerable to extra-familial harm, located within the Youth Justice Service. The council is also developing leaflets for families and looking at where this information will be placed to ensure accessibility.
Some roles remain fixed-term until proof of concept is demonstrated and resources can be re-allocated accordingly. Transitional oversight mechanisms are in place to monitor the impact of the data system changes.
Further information can be found in the Public reports pack for the Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission meeting.
