SFPC: Supporting scaling innovation in children's social care

Children and families

Scaling

Strengthening Families, Protecting Children (SFPC) is a five year Department for Education programme supporting local authorities to improve their work with families, and safely reduce the number of children entering care.

The number of children in care increased 21% between 2009 and 2020, to 80,080
11% of looked after children experienced three or more different placements in 2019-2020.
20% of looked after children were placed more than 20 miles away from their homes

Data source

The Department for Education is investing £84 million over 5 years to support 18 local authorities in their work with families, to safely reduce the number of children entering care. The SFPC programme is supporting these local authorities to adopt and adapt one of the 3 most successful system level innovations developed through the DfE’s children’s social care innovation programme projects into their own area.

The approach

As a support partner alongside our partners Mutual Ventures and SCIE, Innovation Unit is working closely alongside the ‘innovator’ and ‘adopter’ authorities to support the successful adoption and adaptation of these innovations into new contexts and learning across the programme and beyond. In this work we are drawing on our deep experience of supporting the scaling of innovation to new contexts.