Reform without reflection is gambling with lives of vulnerable children

Last month, I met with a family whose experience captures the reality of children’s services right now. They weren’t in just one “pilot” scheme, but felt the impact of several reforms landing at the same time new family help pathways, changes to early years support, and a shift in child protection processes. 

Each initiative promised to be more joined-up, more efficient, and more family-friendly. In practice, the family was left more confused than ever about who was responsible for what, which professional to speak to, and whether the left hand knew what the right hand was doing.

This isn’t unusual. Across England, different local authorities are piloting different reforms, some focused on family help, others on kinship allowances, funding changes, or social workers in schools. While no single authority is tasked with all of them, families often feel as though several changes are happening at once because reforms overlap with other national initiatives or local restructuring. The result can be the same: competing priorities, unclear responsibilities, and too little time to embed learning before the next wave arrives.

A perfect storm of reform

Children's social care is currently experiencing its most significant transformation in decades. The government’s response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has unleashed a wave of pathfinder programmes covering almost every aspect of practice: family help models that promise earlier, more holistic intervention; kinship support programmes that recognise the crucial role of extended families; funding reforms aimed at moving resources upstream; and safeguarding changes that fundamentally alter how child protection conferences operate.

Each reform addresses genuine problems. Family help models respond to the well-documented cliff-edge between early help and statutory services. Kinship support acknowledges that we've undervalued and under-supported family networks. Funding reforms recognise that prevention is both more effective and more cost-effective than crisis intervention.

The problem isn't the individual reforms, it's the pace, the scale, and the lack of sequential learning. When everything changes at once, it becomes impossible to know what's working, what isn't, and why.

Lessons we should have learned

This isn't the first time children's services has experienced rapid, large-scale reform. The 2014 SEND reforms promised to revolutionise support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. On paper, the vision was compelling: better coordination between health, education, and social care, improved transition planning, and genuine co-production with families.

In practice, implementation was chaotic. A House of Lords committee later concluded that the reforms were “an example of inadequate implementation” that had "largely missed the opportunity to improve the lives of children and young people". The problems were predictable: insufficient funding, inadequate training, unrealistic timescales, and a failure to pilot properly before national rollout.

Similarly, when Working Together guidance was significantly slimmed down in 2013, the intention was to give professionals more flexibility and reduce bureaucracy. The reality, however, was often confusion about roles, responsibilities, and processes, particularly for agencies less familiar with safeguarding procedures.

Both examples illustrate the same fundamental problem: good policy intentions undermined by poor implementation planning.

The current risk

Today's reforms risk repeating these mistakes on an even larger scale. In my work across different local authorities, I'm seeing concerning patterns emerge:

• Pilot fatigue: Areas selected for multiple pathfinder programmes are struggling to maintain quality while managing constant change. Staff report feeling like “guinea pigs” in an endless experiment.
• Implementation drift: With limited preparation time and competing pressures, the reality on the ground often bears little resemblance to the model described in policy documents.
• Evaluation challenges: When multiple reforms are implemented simultaneously, it becomes virtually impossible to isolate cause and effect. Are improved outcomes due to the new family help model, increased early intervention funding, or changes to threshold criteria?
• Professional confusion: Workers report uncertainty about their roles, responsibilities, and the processes they should follow. When systems are in constant flux, professional confidence erodes.
• Family bewilderment: Families are experiencing different approaches depending on where they live and when they enter the system. The postcode lottery has never been more pronounced.

Safeguarding at the centre

Nowhere are these risks more acute than in safeguarding. Child protection processes have evolved over decades, shaped by serious case reviews, research evidence, and hard-won experience of what works to keep children safe. Yet some of the current reforms fundamentally alter these processes without adequate testing or evaluation.

The replacement of independent child protection chairs with practitioners embedded within operational teams represents a particularly concerning example. Independent chairs were introduced specifically to prevent groupthink and provide objective challenge. Removing that independence may streamline processes, but at what cost to the quality of decision-making?

When I've raised these concerns, the response is often that the new lead child protection practitioners are “independent” if they’re not the direct case-holder. But independence isn't just about individual case responsibility, it's about perspective, distance, and the ability to challenge team thinking without being constrained by operational pressures.

Early feedback from some pilot areas suggests these concerns aren't theoretical. Practitioners report pressure to chair conferences for cases their teams have investigated, blurring the crucial line between investigation and oversight.

Learning without looking

Perhaps most concerning is the limited evaluation framework accompanying these reforms. While pilot areas are collecting data, there's insufficient focus on understanding unintended consequences, professional experiences, or family perspectives.

We're measuring what's easy to count – timeliness, numbers of children on plans, case closure rates – but struggling to assess what matters most: the quality of decision-making, the appropriateness of interventions, and whether children are actually safer.

This matters because reforms that look successful in the short term can create problems that only emerge later. Faster decision-making might reduce delays but increase errors. Streamlined processes might improve efficiency but reduce thoroughness. Fewer professionals involved might seem more coordinated but could mean crucial perspectives are missed.

What needs to happen

Reform is necessary and nobody would argue that children's services couldn't be improved. But good reform requires patience, proper sequencing, and genuine learning. Here's what that would look like:

• Pause and prioritise: Instead of implementing everything simultaneously, focus on one or two key reforms and do them properly. Allow time to embed learning before moving to the next phase.
• Strengthen evaluation: Invest in rigorous, independent evaluation that looks beyond simple metrics to understand the true impact on professional practice and family experience.
• Listen to practitioners: The professionals implementing these reforms have valuable insights about what's working and what isn't. Create formal mechanisms to capture and act on their feedback.
• Support implementation: Provide adequate training, resources, and time for organisations to implement reforms properly rather than expecting them to muddle through.
• Maintain safeguards: Ensure that efficiency gains don't come at the cost of the checks and balances that keep children safe.

A practitioner's plea

I want to see children's services improve. Every practitioner does. We know the current system isn't perfect, and we welcome evidence-based reforms that genuinely improve outcomes for children and families.

But we also know that change for change's sake helps nobody. Reforms implemented too quickly, without proper evaluation or adequate support, risk making things worse rather than better.

The families we serve deserve better than being unwitting participants in an uncontrolled experiment. They deserve reforms built on evidence, implemented thoughtfully, and evaluated honestly.

Most importantly, they deserve to know that in our rush to reform, we haven't forgotten the fundamental principle that should guide everything we do: keeping children safe.

Reform without reflection isn't progress – it's a gamble with the lives of the most vulnerable children in our society. That's not a gamble any of us should be willing to take.

Read an open letter from a care-experienced newly qualified social worker in the November/December edition of PSW

Amy Eyers is an independent safeguarding consultant and former child protection chair with over a decade's experience in children's social care. She has worked across frontline, management, and quality assurance roles, and now advises organisations on safeguarding practice, policy, and training. Amy is the national safeguarding lead for Endometriosis South Coast. Learn more at www.amyeyers.com.