con_21206 CR: Delivery Partner of Families First for Children Pathfinder Programme Extension 01/10/2025 - 31/03/2026

This is a notice for the Award of Contract: Delivery Partner of Families First for Children Pathfinder Programme.

The Independent Care Review and National Panel review made a number of ambitious recommendations to transform support and protection in children’s social care (CSC). In response to these recommendations DfE has published its implementation strategy, which sets out its proposed reforms in this area of CSC:

a. A new category of support – family help – to replace the current framework across voluntary targeted early help services to statutory child in need services.

b. Restructuring the workforce so a multidisciplinary team of family help workers can own relationships with families in need under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 (this means that a wider range of professionals can lead, rather than always being qualified social workers, as is the current set up).

c. More effective, integrated multi-agency child protection response, including dedicated, highly skilled professionals from local authorities, police and health with responsibility for specific child protection functions.

d. Change to organisational culture, involving wider family members and connected people as a central component throughout family help and child protection.

This is a pivotal moment for children’s social care. Given the scale and complexity of the reform programme, and the importance of robust testing to inform future policy, we are seeking to contract to an external organisation (a ‘Delivery Partner’) to support pathfinder local areas to implement new ways of delivering services to children and families; to identify the conditions for successful and sustained implementation of reforms across local areas; and to facilitate learning dissemination, from the programme, across relevant sectors.

The Delivery Partner will work as part of a virtual team with the DfE pathfinder programme team, the external Evaluation Partner and relevant policy officials – working collaboratively towards a shared vision for a reformed children’s social care system.