MacAlister urges sector to seize ‘once-in-a-generation’ chance to reset children’s social care

Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister urged local leaders to “move fast” to deliver the government’s reform programme.

Addressing DCSs at the NCASC conference, MacAlister said the system remains “stuck in a doom loop of ever-increasing late-stage crisis costs”, with state intervention still amounting to “state-sanctioned failure” for too many children despite years of effort and investment.

“Time is ticking away,” the Labour MP for Whitehaven and Workington said. “The child born when I started the independent review of children's social care has now started primary school. The baby born when Eileen Monroe did her review is about to sit their GCSEs. Some of the children I taught when I started my career as a school teacher are grown adults, some of them with their own children at school. Working in this field gives us a stark awareness of time, and how precious it is for those growing up. That is why there is so much urgency to our work now.”

The minister, who previously led the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, said the government had now provided the conditions for reform, including £2.4bn over three years for the Families First programme, in addition to existing early-help allocations. The funding is intended to support a shift towards much earlier family support, reversing rising demand for acute and costly statutory intervention.

MacAlister also committed to reducing what he described as an overbearing tangle of legislation and guidance that “makes it harder” for social workers and managers to use professional judgment.

He reiterated plans for a new National Children’s Social Care Framework, with clear goals and evidence-informed practice guides to support more consistent decision-making.

Significantly, MacAlister highlighted child poverty as a key driver of demand: a link he said was previously “disputed” by the former government. Speaking after the Autumn Budget, where it was announced the two-child benefit cap would be lifted, he said the current administration’s policies would lift 550,000 children out of poverty this parliament, easing pressure on services and reducing family stress.

The minister warned that implementing Families First would involve challenging long-held assumptions about the state’s role, risk, and the relationship between families and professionals.

“It will mean changing what you expect from your own managers and practitioners so that this work is arranged around the convenience and needs of families, not the other way around,” he told leaders.

Successful reform, he said, would require “relentless” scrutiny and collective accountability.

MacAlister pointed to emerging local examples including Wolverhampton’s family group decision-making model, Walsall’s multidisciplinary family help teams and Dorset’s enhanced health assessments, as early evidence that change is possible.

Turning to the care system, MacAlister described a sector “in crisis”, with falling foster carer numbers, rising residential placements and a “failed market model” enabling profit extraction while local authorities lose control of placement sufficiency.

He confirmed plans due “in the coming weeks” to significantly expand the foster carer workforce and “reinvent fostering” to better meet the needs of children in care today.

Central to the strategy will be the accelerated rollout of regional care cooperatives (RCCs), which he said would become the “future model of the care system”. RCCs would pool commissioning expertise across regions but be held accountable for ensuring more children live close to their existing networks.

MacAlister also trailed forthcoming measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and new funding for care leavers, saying support must be grounded not in services alone but in ensuring young people have “enduring, loving relationships”.

“This must force everybody in the system to ask: are there adults in this young person’s life who love them? And if not, what are we going to do about it?”

Concluding, MacAlister urged the sector not to allow the moment to pass.

“We can't stay stuck in the old system that has exhausted, frustrated and demoralised those working in it. That has too often failed those children and families who need it. We need to go at pace and we need to go together. If we do, it will be worth it because getting it right will be a proof point that we really can renew our country.”