Children and Family Wellbeing Strategic Plan 2024 to 2026 - Our journey so far

Disaggregation of former Cumbria County Council’s Children’s Services to Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness Council, while ensuring safe service delivery.

Reviewed how we deliver Family Help in Cumberland, undertaking a strategic analysis of need and subsequently co-designing and launching our Family Help and Preventative Strategy for children and families.

We have launched our Cumberland Local Area SEND and Alternative Provision Strategy 2024 to 2028.

Opened our first Family Hub, named by our families as Family Hub on the Harbour, Whitehaven, working with the local community and partners to deliver services that are tailored to local need.

Led the way nationally in recognising care experience as a protected characteristic. Cumberland Council was the first Local Authority in the country to secure this commitment and recognise the valuable contribution care experienced young adults make to our community and society.

We have a refreshed and renewed Corporate Parenting Board chaired by the Portfolio Holder for Children and Housing, which ensures Elected Members and stakeholder partners regularly hear feedback directly from our children.

We have launched our Corporate Parenting strategy and accompanying corporate parenting delivery plan.

Continually striving for excellence for our children, we have developed a children’s Improvement Board, chaired by an independent DfE appointed advisor. We have revised our Improvement and Development Plan which has been developed from external and internal scrutiny through deep dive review, family feedback and audit.

Secured significant investment in the Children and Family Wellbeing Directorate through additional senior leadership capacity. This includes a new role of Assistant Director for Early Help, Prevention and Youth Justice plus an additional Senior Manager. We have revised the senior management roles within social care, implementing a Senior Manager for Corporate Parenting and Senior Manager for Support and Protection both of whom are permanently in post.

We have redesigned the Assistant Director role for Safeguarding and Quality Assurance which includes a dedicated Principal Social Worker post and quality assurance lead. 

We have successfully secured DfE support to develop a Regional Fostering and Recruitment Hub and Mockingbird model of support to foster carers.

We have secured participation in a DfE supported project to support cared for children through a Family Finding project. We have realigned Family Resilience Workers to the project to support cared for children to return to Cumberland - and, where possible, return to the care of their families.

We have launched a new Quality Assurance Framework and Practice Standards. Feedback from families is now a standard part of our auditing work and is used to ensure that we are learning from what our families tell us.

Invested in our Social Work Academy and overseas workforce.

We have established links with research projects. As a council, we have secured £5m in funding to enable our staff to participate in research, which contributes to improving services and their own their continued professional development.

Transforming our services

We have embarked on an ambitious three-year transformation programme for Children, Family and Wellbeing Services:

• Launched a vision for our residential children’s homes through our revised sufficiency strategy
• Created one integrated front door to enable better access to services, now based in Cumberland and co-located with partners
• We have reviewed our targeted short breaks provision for children with additional needs and disabilities to improve access to and delivery of services
• Review of home to school transport and traded services to deliver services more effectively and efficiently
• Supported a number of cared for children to return to Cumberland by more effective commissioning, positive engagement with the local children’s home providers - ‘Cumberland Children First’
• Reviewed our offer to kinship carers - securing investment in frontline staffing to enable enhanced support and development of a ‘no child disadvantaged SGO policy’ recognising the vital role kinship carers play in children’s lives