Family First Programme
Overview
Family First is a new programme that will change how services for children and families are provided. The aim is for every child in East Sussex to thrive at home, in school and in their community.
We are changing how we work so families get help earlier and in their local area. These pages explain what is changing and how you can take part.
Earlier intervention
We offer expert help and guidance through a Consultation Advice Line. This allows all professionals to talk things through and get reassurance about the advice they are offering.
This support is aimed at professionals helping families with emerging difficulties. You can find out more about what that means by looking at the Continuum of Need, which shows what kind of help is needed and when.
If it becomes clear that a family needs further support, you can request a consultation with a Team Around the Family Coordinator, who can connect the right people.
Don’t forget: if you need to raise a safeguarding concern because you are worried about a risk of harm or think a child is in immediate danger, you must continue to contact SPoA.
How we are working
- focus on earlier intervention and whole family support
- make it easier to get the right help first time
- strengthen local, place-based working between professionals
- reduce the need for statutory intervention where safe to do so
What does this mean for you?
If you work with children and families, you’ll have more support and resources to help families sooner. If you are a family, you can expect more coordinated help, with your needs at the centre.
What is changing
The Family First programme has four strands:
- Earlier intervention
In East Sussex, earlier intervention is our first priority. It's about ensuring families get the right help, at the right time, before problems become more serious. We support all professionals working with children and families across education, health, the police, and voluntary and community organisations.
- Family help teams
Bring together early help and social work staff to offer seamless, relationship-based support: Family Help teams. - Multi‑agency child protection teams
Develop a consistent, multi-agency approach with police, education and health: Multi-agency child protection teams (MACPT) - Family networks and kinship care
Help families plan support and care solutions within their wider network: Family network and kinship care
Why we are doing this
National reforms set a clear direction to improve support for children and families. Locally, we are shifting from reactive, crisis-led work to earlier, joined-up family help.
- Children’s Wellbeing and Education Bill
- Department for Education’s Families First Partnership Programme
What's next?
Family First will be rolled out over the coming months, with regular updates, training, and opportunities to get involved. The focus is on building a sustainable system that helps families early, makes the most of community strengths, and ensures children are protected and supported.
Governance
The programme is overseen by the Children’s Services Transformation Board, chaired by the Director of Children’s Services.
Working groups led by heads of service and operational managers involve staff and partners across the system.
Contact us
Family Help teams
Creating Family Help Teams
We know that building strong relationships with families is what makes a difference. That means families should be able to tell their story once, and the number of handovers between practitioners should be kept to a minimum.
The Family help pilot
We launched an Eastbourne-based pilot of the Family Help model 19 January 2026.
Family Help teams will be focussed on the family’s strengths and are designed to reduce duplication of assessments, as well as providing more seamless support.
If you’re a professional working with a family who has already been allocated a worker based in Eastbourne, you should call the Family Help Team when you, or the family, need to make contact.
The new Family Help team includes early intervention teams, who work with families with emerging problems, and social work teams. In Eastbourne, Family Help teams have replaced Duty and Assessment, Youth Support and Family Support.
Following consultation with professionals, we will also be piloting a Family Help Youth Support Team to provide specialist support to young people who are at particularly high risk.
What next?
During the pilot, we will assess and evaluate the new approach through feedback from children, families, staff, and partners.
Adjustments will be implemented to ensure the safety of children and families while delivering the highest quality relationship-based support and social work.
Roll out is planned towards the end of 2026.
Multi-agency child protection teams (MACPT)
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (December 2024) set out the requirement for local authorities to create a Multi-Agency Child Protection Team.
Within the MACPT, police, education and health are equal safeguarding partners who ensure consistency - from the initial strategy meeting to the final child protection conference.
The aim is to strengthen child protection practice through multi-agency collaboration, shared expertise, and improved quality assurance and communication.
How MACPT Supports Family First Reform
- Prevention and early help: MACPT is designed to prevent problems escalating by enabling earlier, proactive support so families get the right help before statutory intervention is needed. This aligns with the national shift towards prevention and family help.
- Empowering families: the voice of the parent and child is central to decision-making. This supports the family network approach and ensures families have the information and support needed to effect change.
- Multi-agency collaboration: MACPT brings together professionals from different agencies as equal partners, improving shared responsibility and decision-making in child protection processes, helping improve information flow, reduce delays and improve child protection responses
- Stable safeguarding system: the model builds on the strong safeguarding arrangements already in place in East Sussex, adding value without destabilising effective practices. It ensures that well-understood safeguarding thresholds are applied consistently across the county.
- Quality assurance and learning: MACPT introduces a strong quality assurance function, improves key processes and drives continuous improvement across the system.
Bringing child protection partners together to work more closely, the new MACP Team will be better equipped for effective information sharing, identifying significant harm quickly and taking effective protective action.
What's next for MACPT?
We are currently developing this new model with our partners in police, health, and education, with a view to piloting this approach in the summer of 2026. Full rollout is anticipated in the Spring of 2027.
Family network and kinship care
The Family Network approach is about actively involving a child’s extended family, friends and trusted members of their community whenever possible. Family-led decisions will form the basis of a plan to ensure the child’s safety, stability and wellbeing.
Professionals will focus on developing strong relationships with the family. From the very start of their involvement, they will help to identify the child’s trusted family network.
The professional will then provide support to the family to create the family-led plan that draws on the family’s strengths and resources.
This approach:
- promotes family ownership and self-determination, reducing reliance on statutory services.
- ensures plans are culturally appropriate, sustainable, and rooted in relationships that last beyond agency involvement; and
- aligns with child protection principles by focusing on keeping children safely within their family network wherever possible.
For more information on how we support kinship carers, see Kinship Care.