The Department for Education (DfE) is to offer £200m of funding over the next four years to support the development of new approaches to children’s social care.
The money, which forms the second round of the DfE’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme, will be given to projects that seek to “rethink” how children’s social care is delivered and improve looked-after children’s transition into adulthood.
The DfE intends to start awarding money to projects this summer and will be accepting bids between now and July.
The funds will also be used to help the spread the work of projects that received money in the first round of the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to new areas.
A document setting out details of the funding programme and the process for making bids has been published on the DfE website.
Transforming life chances
Education secretary Nicky Morgan said: “We’re inviting charities and councils to come forward with their most creative ideas to transform the lives of those most in need, because no ambition can be too great when it comes to transforming children’s life chances.”
The first round of the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme, which began in 2014, saw the DfE hand out £110m to 53 projects across England.
Projects that received money included £1m for an outreach project to help those at risk of female genital mutilation run by Barnardo’s and Local Government Association, and £4m to fund the redesign of frontline children’s social care in the London triborough (Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster).
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I could laugh but i want to cry. What about the hundreds of projects they just forced closure of through cuts? Now start a whole new set probably with the same workers as before with new job titles and remit
It is all a farce.
Totally agree – here we go again with more new projects !
So, whilst we need to evidence research for the decisions made and intervention with families the government would rather tender for bidders for children’s social care instead of funding research. Why is the rhetoric regarding under resourced teams from SCR’s and Munro constantly ignored, yet money thrown in to “new”, non-evidenced and ill-researched ventures. The question who really benefits comes to.mind, and I can sure as hell bet it will not be children, the workers or charities.
Absolutely – a very easy piece of research … Ask adults who came through the care system what they think either made the difference or they lacked … A shrewd guess might be someone who looked out for them like your family do !
Oh well, after 15 years, 5 major transformations, computer systems that don’t work and ‘Think Family’ (ha) is it any surprise that more money is being given to ‘new approaches’.