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The government has published its implementation plan for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, setting out how it intends to deliver wide-ranging reforms to children’s social care, safeguarding and child protection services across England.
The plan, titled Delivering the Children’s Social Care Reset, outlines the next phase of reforms following the passage of what ministers have described as the most significant child protection legislation in a generation.
According to the Department for Education, the reforms are intended to strengthen early intervention, improve safeguarding arrangements and reduce reliance on residential care by increasing support for kinship and foster care placements.
Josh MacAlister, Children and Families Minister, said the programme represented a “historic moment for children’s social care and child protection in England”, adding that the reforms aimed to ensure more children could grow up in “stable, loving homes”.
Under the plans, every local authority will be required to establish a single Family Help service intended to provide earlier intervention and coordinated support to families. New multi-agency child protection teams will also be introduced, bringing together social workers, police, health and education professionals.
The reforms place significant emphasis on kinship care. Councils will be required to publish local kinship care offers aligned with national standards, with the government aiming to enable more children to remain within wider family networks rather than entering unrelated care placements.
The implementation plan also confirms further expansion of Regional Care Cooperatives alongside efforts to increase foster care capacity and improve placement commissioning arrangements.
Additional support for care leavers will be introduced through a national Staying Close offer from 2029, providing ongoing assistance with accommodation, employment and healthcare up to the age of 25.
The government said the reforms are backed by substantial investment, including:
The plan also includes measures aimed at workforce reform, including enhanced training and professional standards for residential care staff, investment in newly qualified social workers and tighter regulation of agency workers from 2028 in an attempt to improve workforce stability.
Alongside the implementation plan, Foundations has published an evidence-based implementation framework intended to support local authorities and partner agencies delivering the reforms.
The government also confirmed that local authorities are now under a statutory duty to promote sibling contact for children in care where this is consistent with the child’s best interests.
The implementation plan follows a series of wider reforms across family justice and child protection, including increased emphasis on kinship care, foster care expansion, early intervention and non-adversarial approaches to supporting vulnerable children and families.
