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Family Network Support Packages

The government’s Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy set out its plan to reform children’s social care through a series of ambitions, one of which is: ‘supporting families to help children’.

Building on earlier recommendations from the 2022 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, this reform seeks to unlock the potential of family networks to provide practical support for families, and a stable loving home for children who cannot live with their birth parents.

To support this ambition, as part of the Families First for Children Pathfinder programme, we are able to offer bespoke packages of support for family networks to ensure children and families can stay together and thrive wherever possible.

Who is Eligible?

FNSP’s are designed to keep children living safely at home with support from the wider family network. Eligibility criteria is as follows:

  • At least one of the children in the family must be open to Family Help services on a Team Around the Family or Child in Need plan, or on a Child Protection plan
  • There must be an identified Family Help Lead Practitioner involved
  • The child must normally reside with the birth parent/s. However, children who already live with a wider family network member will be eligible if the FNSP will support and maintain the stability of that arrangement
  • A child who is unable to remain with their birth parent/s, but could live in a stable home with a wider family network member will be eligible if the FNSP can help overcome practical or financial barriers
  • A FNSP can also be requested if it will enable a child to return to their birth family by helping to overcome practical or financial barriers
  • A FGC/FGDM meeting must have been held (unless no family network can be identified) and have identified the required support
  • Where no family network can be identified please consult with the Pathfinder Programme lead for Practice

What are Family Network Support Packages?

A FNSP is funding specifically for family networks to enable them to provide support to a family where there is a current practical or financial barrier to them doing so.

The focus of family network reform within the Pathfinder is as a preventative tool. The primary aim for FNSPs is to enable a children to safely remain living with their birth parents and for birth parents to retain sole parental responsibility, while being supported to do so by the involvement of the wider family network.

When a child cannot remain with their parents, wider family and friends, with support may be able to offer a safe, stable, and loving alternative to children having to live in care. In this situation, the use of FNSPs could support a transition into kinship care, but this a secondary aim for the pathfinder.

Examples of support that can be provided through FNSP’s includes:

  • providing funding for family network members to meet the child’s immediate needs, such as uniform costs, desk, bus pass, car seats
  • providing funding for things family networks need to support the child, such as household appliances, beds and bedroom furniture, redecoration, remodelling, transport costs, cost of activities etc.
  • ‘buying in’ additional family support
  • pay to support unpaid leave of family network members (not parents)

This is not an exhaustive list and practitioners are encouraged to be creative and consider a family’s context and situation when designing a package.

The government criteria is quite clear and support is only for family network members to support children and young people in the family, support cannot be directly given to parents.

FNSP’s can be used for reunification if there are practical or financial barriers in the way.

It is important to note that funding through FNSP’s does not impact on any state benefits which are being received.

The FNSP needs to be sustainable, and should therefore exclude items which require ongoing payments or costs, for example, rent payments could not be part of a package.

FNSP’s also cannot fund something that alternative programmes are designed to address.

If you are unsure about anything please contact the FNSP team. [email protected]

FNSP Decision making Flowchart

Please use the flowchart below to determine if a case is likely to be eligible for a FNSP.

How do I Apply?

To apply the Family Help Lead Practitioner should complete the application form available on LiquidLogic (Family Network Support Packages Application Form). If a FGC/FGDM meeting has not be held at the time of the application this will be required (unless a family network cannot be identified) before the application can be taken forward.

What Happens Next?

The completed application will be considered by the appropriate head of service and the FNSP team. Once approved the FNSP team will work with the FHLP to finalise and commission the FNSP.

The FNSP process is set out in the process map below:

A guidance document for practitioners which summarises the above information is available to download here:

Wirral Families First for Children Pathfinder

Families First for Children Pathfinder – Wirral Safeguarding Children Partnership

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