The Children, Families and Skills Scrutiny Committee were scheduled to meet on Wednesday 3 December 2025 in Committee Room 'C' - The Duke of Lancaster Room, County Hall, Preston. The agenda included the Principal Social Worker Annual Report, the Families First Programme, and the Children, Families and Skills Work Programme for 2025/26.

Families First Programme

The committee was scheduled to discuss the Families First Programme, a transformation and improvement initiative funded by the Department for Education (DfE). The report provided to the committee explained that the Families First Programme is designed to transform children's social care by embedding Family Help, Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs), and Family Group Decision Making (FGDM).

The aims of the Families First Programme include:

• Reducing fragmentation
• Improving outcomes
• Ensuring children remain safely with their families wherever possible

The report stated that the Families First Programme is directly linked to the government's Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive policy, the Independent Review of Children's Social Care (2022), and the Children and Wellbeing Bill. It also aligns with the Supporting Families programme and local strategies for early help and safeguarding.

The programme is being implemented in three phases:

• (i) Foundations and Early Delivery (2025–2026)
• (ii) Expansion and Embedding (2026–2027)
• (iii) Sustainability and System Reform (2027 onwards)

The project team were expected to develop options for the implementation of both the Families First model and the Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs). The report stated that the programme would be developed in consultation with statutory partners (Police, Health, Education), internal services (Children's Social Care, Early Help), and external stakeholders, including families and voluntary sector organisations.

The key risks of the programme include capacity constraints, financial sustainability, and inter-agency coordination, particularly in the context of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR). These risks are heightened by the financial challenges currently faced by partner organisations, most notably the Integrated Care Board (ICB).

Principal Social Worker Annual Report

The committee was scheduled to discuss the Annual Report of the Principal Social Worker (PSW). The report explained that the Principal Social Worker role was borne from the Munro Review of Child Protection, 2011, which recommended that:

Local Authorities should designate a Principal Child and Family Social Worker, who is a senior manager with lead responsibility for practice in the local authority and who is still actively involved in frontline practice and can report the views and experience of the front line to all levels of management.

The report stated that in Lancashire one of the primary aims of the Principal Social Worker is to drive the council's Workforce Strategy. The PSW service plan for 2024 2025 identifies several key priority areas, including:

• Improving practice and delivering excellence
• Workforce planning
• Reducing vacancies
• Making Lancashire the preferred choice for staff to work and develop their careers
• Improving staff retention and reducing turnover rate
• Developing an adaptable, creative, innovative, resourceful, knowledgeable and highly skilled workforce who are provided with the opportunities, training and support to practice at the highest standards.

The report stated that Lancashire continues to lead the way Regionally, with not only the lowest hourly rates being paid to agency staff, but also the lowest overall agency usage. At the end of April 2025, there were 34 Agency Workers in post, making up just 6.4% of the case holding social work workforce.

The report also stated that the turnover rates for case holding social workers sit well below the national average, and the 12 month rolling average, April 2025 is at 10%.

Children, Families and Skills Work Programme 2025/26

The committee was scheduled to receive a report which presented the work programme for the Children, Families and Skills Scrutiny Committee for 2025/26. The committee was expected to discuss the key lines of enquiry set out for items due to be presented at the next meeting of the Committee on 14 January 2026, which include:

• Child and Youth Justice Service
• Education Strategy Annual Report and Attainment Data