DFE SFPC Project Support Requirement

The Department for Education is looking to tender a contract to an external organisation to provide high-quality, tailored support and expertise to local authorities involved in the Children's Social Care Strengthening Families, Protecting Children programme, to support the successful implementation of whole-system change to the way children's social care services are delivered in up to 20 councils. Background to the Strengthening Families, Protecting Children programme The Autumn Budget 2018 made available up to £84m over five years for the Children's Social Care Strengthening Families, Protecting Children (SFPC) programme.

The purpose of this programme is to support up to 20 local authorities with high or rising demand for children's social care services to improve the support they offer to vulnerable children and their families. Through this, the programme aims to enable more children to stay at home thriving in stable family environments where it is safe for them to do so, and safely reduce the number of children entering care.

The programme will do this by investing up to £84m over five years from April 2019 to support local authorities to adapt and adopt one of three projects developed by Leeds, Hertfordshire, or North Yorkshire. These three projects were funded in Round One of the Department for Education's Children's Social Care Innovation Programme.

This programme, launched in 2014, looked to support innovative ideas to flourish, and better enable policy and practice to be driven by a strong evidence base of what works. All projects were independently evaluated. The three chosen projects for the SFPC programme (Leeds 'Family Valued', Hertfordshire 'Family Safeguarding', and North Yorkshire's 'No Wrong Door') all demonstrated the most promising evidence of safely managing demand at the more severe end of the children's social care spectrum.