Families First Partnership Programme

The Families First Partnership (FFP) Programme is a national programme led by the Department for Education (DfE) to strengthen the way local systems work together to support children and families. The programme forms part of wider children’s social care reform and has a particular focus on improving multi-agency working across the continuum of help and protection.

The programme brings together three key areas of reform:

  • Family Help – bringing together targeted early help and statutory Child in Need support into a more integrated, multi-disciplinary offer, with a single assessment and plan and a named Family Help Lead Practitioner coordinating support around the child and family

  • Family Group Decision Making and family network support – strengthening the involvement of families and their wider networks in decision-making and in developing sustainable solutions for children

  • Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs) – strengthening the multi-agency response where children are suffering, or are at risk of suffering, significant harm

Aim of the programme

The overarching aim is to create a more joined-up system of help, support and protection, where agencies share information effectively, work collectively with families and children, and draw on the right expertise at the right time. This includes strengthening the links between preventative services, Family Help, the front door and specialist child protection arrangements, rather than treating these as separate parts of the system. The DfE describes FFP as a programme of multi-agency, system-wide reform, rather than solely a reform of children's social care.

The partnership’s Wider Safeguarding Executive group receives regular updates from the dedicated workstream for implementation of these reforms, ensuring appropriate multi-agency input, oversight and accountability.

Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 has established a statutory basis for MACPTs. The Act amends the Children Act 2004 to require safeguarding partners to include the establishment of one or more MACPTs within their multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. The purpose of MACPTs is to support the local authority in discharging its statutory duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, including coordinating assistance provided by other agencies.

MACPTs are intended to strengthen the quality, consistency and timeliness of multi-agency child protection practice. The national policy direction is that they should provide a strong multi-agency response to significant harm, bringing together the expertise and information held by different agencies to support effective assessment, decision-making and protective action.

The statutory core membership comprises representation from:

  • Children's social care/social work

  • Police

  • Health, and

  • Education

Safeguarding partners can also include additional practitioners and expertise according to local need and the local profile of harm.

The detailed functions of MACPTs will be set out further through regulations and statutory guidance. The DfE's current policy statement indicates that these functions are expected to include:

  • Convening strategy discussions and supporting consistent application of the significant harm threshold

  • Leading and supporting section 47 enquiries

  • Convening child protection conferences and forums

  • Overseeing the development, review and closure of child protection plans

  • Providing specialist child protection consultation and advice to practitioners

  • Developing an understanding of local patterns and types of significant harm and the effectiveness of agency responses, and

  • Supporting a shared multi-agency practice framework, with clear roles, accountability and decision-making arrangements

Importantly, MACPTs do not transfer the local authority's statutory responsibility for child protection enquiries or decisions about what action should be taken to protect a child. Rather, they provide dedicated multi-agency support and expertise to enable the local authority to discharge those responsibilities effectively.

FFP and MACPTs within the wider safeguarding system

FFP and MACPTs should be understood as complementary elements of a wider safeguarding system. Family Help provides the mechanism for coordinated support around children and families, while MACPTs provide specialist multi-agency expertise where there are concerns about significant harm.

This creates an opportunity to strengthen the connections between early help, statutory family support and child protection, ensuring that children and families can move between different levels of support without unnecessary duplication, delay or handovers. The DfE specifically identifies the importance of MACPTs working closely with Family Help teams, with Family Help continuing to coordinate day-to-day support and interventions while MACPTs provide an additional forensic and expert child protection perspective.

For safeguarding partners, this represents an opportunity to strengthen shared practice, information sharing, professional challenge and collective decision-making across agencies. It also supports a more consistent approach to identifying and responding to risk, while ensuring that families receive appropriate support and that protective action is taken promptly where significant harm is identified.