Wirral social care to be transformed after joining national programme

Families in Wirral will see children’s social care transformed following a successful bid as the borough joins the national ‘Families First for Children’ Pathfinder programme.

The borough is one of seven areas to be announced to deliver the scheme today (10 April 2024), which aims to improve services to help more children stay with their families in safe and loving homes and protecting vulnerable children from harm where needed.

Wirral will receive upwards of £3m to enhance the children’s social care offer across local communities.

Elizabeth Hartley, Director for Children, Families and Education at Wirral Council said:

“We’re of course thrilled that our bid to join the pathfinder programme has been successful. Locally we’ve made great strides to work together with families to help prevent issues before they escalate.

“This funding will enable us to continue to make fantastic progress in this area, ensuring that we work with families to support and empower them. It will also provide more opportunities to improve our support for families with children and young people with SEND.”

Families First funding will build on the local authority’s existing work around targeted early help for families suffering domestic abuse, addiction, or poor mental health, to help them overcome adversity before issues escalate and children are put at risk of harm.

The project also presents an opportunity to:

• Roll out multi-disciplinary family help teams, to make sure families with multiple needs can access all the support they need earlier and in one place
• Make greater use of extended family members, with them being the first port of call if extra support is required, and practical and financial support provided to them if needed
• Establish dedicated multi-agency child protection teams
• Create stronger and clearer multi-agency safeguarding processes, including an increased role for education and improved information sharing

Find more information here.

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