Families First Partnership Overview

Sefton Families First Partnership is about creating stronger families and brighter futures. In Sefton, our goal is simple:

To work together with families, schools, health, police, and community groups so families get help early and feel supported.

We want every family to feel:

Listened to
Understood
Supported

To make sure everyone understands each other when we are talking about the Families First Partnership, we have put together a glossary of acronyms so we're all on the same page!

The Families First Partnership

The Families First Partnership Programme is a national initiative to help improve children’s social care across England. It encourages services to work together and take a more joined-up, family-focused approach to early help and child protection.

The programme focuses on:

Giving the right Family Help at the right time
Creating Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs)
Using Family Group Decision Making to involve families in planning

It is based on the Working Together to Safeguard Children framework, and its aim is to make sure children and families get the support they need, when they need it.

What’s Changing and Why?

We know that families often have to repeat their story to lots of different services. That can be frustrating and tiring.

The Families First Partnership changes aim to fix this by:

Giving help earlier, before things become more difficult
Making sure you only need to tell your story once
Bringing the right people together to work as one team
Ensuring your voice is part of every decision and plan

What’s New?

We’re introducing three key changes to improve support for families:

Family Help

Support starts early. We bring together professionals from different services to help families before problems grow.
There will be:

One lead practitioner to coordinate support
Clear assessments
Easy-to-follow pathways to services

Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs)

Professionals from different backgrounds (such as health, education, social care, and police) work together in one local team.
Each team will:

Have a dedicated child protection lead
Respond quickly to local needs
Provide support for parents and carers

Family Group Decision Making (FGDM)

Also known in Sefton as Family Group Conferencing, this gives families a voice in making plans for their child.
We help families:

Make decisions together
Build their own support network
Find solutions that work for them

How Can I Find Out More or Get Involved?

Read our newsletters
Complete a short survey – Tell us what’s working and what could improve
Join a co-design group for workforce and professionals – Help design services with us
Join a co-design group for children, young people and families - Details to be confirmed.
Attend a community event – Share your views in person

Your voice matters. You can help shape how services work in Sefton. Families First Partnership is a better way of working - with you, not just for you.

We’re proud of the support already in place in Sefton. Now, we’re building on that to make services:

Easier to access
More joined-up
More focused on what families need