Putting children first: Codesigning the future of children’s social care in Southwark
Safeguarding partners in Southwark are co-designing local reform of children’s social care in collaboration with frontline staff, safeguarding partners, children, young people and families to ensure their voices are at the heart of service design and the reforms are grounded in local context.
The team are keen to collaborate and learn from ongoing feedback and are therefore adopting a phased ‘test and learn’ approach. As part of this approach, the first group of Integrated Family Help Pilot teams started taking referrals in January 2026 based on a locality model, starting with the East Central Neighbourhood, which includes Old Kent Road, Peckham, Peckham Rye, Rye Lane, Nunhead and Queen’s Road.
The team in the current pilot include social work qualified and highly skilled professionals, such as family support workers and early years specialists, with support from a dedicated clinical practitioner and, in the near future, a health practitioner.
The Government has asked local areas to change how they deliver children’s social care. In March 2025, the Department for Education (DfE) published their Families First Partnership (FFP) programme guide setting out how reforms should be implemented.
The national Families First for Children reform programme is intended to deliver a reimagined end-to-end children’s social care system with a focus on prevention and early intervention. The new structure will prioritise integrated working and removing barriers and hand-offs within the system. It brings together targeted early intervention with statutory safeguarding into a seamless family help approach.
The safeguarding partnership team in Southwark is working with colleagues from across the Families First Partnership Programme, Best Start Family Hubs and Integrated Neighbourhood Health teams, to strengthen their joined-up support for residents.
Based on recent NHS and government guidance, the approach of adopting multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) and locality working aligns with the strategic shift toward Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs), which are designed to proactively manage care for local populations. These teams integrate health, social care, and voluntary sector partners to provide holistic, person-centred care, reducing reliance on hospital services.