Reunification after Families First: the permanence and workforce challenge children’s services cannot afford to treat as an afterthought
Reunification has moved from the margins to the centre of reform
Reunification is sometimes described as an exit from care. That description is administratively accurate but strategically inadequate. A child returning to a parent is not simply the point at which a placement ends or a care episode closes. It is a major permanence transition: one that must restore relationships, address the conditions that contributed to care entry and create enough practical, therapeutic and relational support for family life to remain safe and sustainable.
That matters at scale. The latest accredited statistics available at 6 October 2026 show that 81,770 children were looked after in England on 31 March 2025. This was 2% lower than in 2024 and below the recent peak of 83,750 in 2023, but still slightly above the 80,780 recorded in 2021. During 2024–25, 34,450 children ceased to be looked after, although the Department for Education estimates that the figure was closer to 31,810 after excluding transfers between local authorities. Returning home to parents through the care-planning process remained the most common reason for leaving care; Foundations calculates that returns home accounted for 24% of all children ceasing to be looked after in 2024–25.
The wider care data reinforces why a return home cannot be judged solely by whether it happens. In 2024–25, 10% of looked-after children experienced three or more placements in the year; the rate was 14% among children who had been in care for less than 12 months. Forty-four per cent of children were placed outside their local authority boundary, while the number living in children’s homes, including secure homes, rose by 9% to 9,480. These are not direct measures of reunification need, but they illuminate the instability, separation and sufficiency pressures within which decisions about returning home are being made.
The most sobering national evidence concerns what happens afterwards. Analysis of England’s linked children-looked-after datasets found that, following reunification, 12% of children re-entered care within three months, 20% within one year and 35% within six years. Those figures relate to historical cohorts rather than children reunified under the 2026 reforms, but they remain the strongest national longitudinal estimates available. They show why a successful return home cannot mean “not back in care at the next review”. Sustainability needs to be considered over years, not weeks.
The 2026 policy shift is more significant than a new practice initiative
The March 2026 Children’s Social Care National Framework makes the direction unmistakable. It says practitioners should “consider every possible option for safe reunification”, practice supervisors should champion reunification even where it is “a gradual and long-term process”, and senior leaders should embed a culture of “family first”. Crucially, the Framework is statutory guidance: it should be complied with unless exceptional circumstances arise.
The March 2026 Families First Partnership programme guide then connects that ambition to the operating model. It describes meaningful engagement with family networks as the “golden thread” through help, protection and care, and says Family Help can play a crucial role in enabling families to develop sustainable plans for a child’s safe return. It expects Family Help, multidisciplinary teams, Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, Family Group Decision Making and Family Network Support Packages to operate as an integrated system, with reformed services fully operational across localities by March 2027.
This is backed by substantial, although not unlimited, investment. The programme guide states that more than £2.4 billion will be provided for Families First over three years, including more than £800 million of new investment. The funding is ringfenced for prevention and is not intended to displace existing preventative expenditure. The strategic expectation is a rebalancing away from crisis and high-cost care towards earlier and more effective family support.
The June 2026 government consultation goes further. It proposes that reunification should become a specific pathway within Family Help: children returning home would receive section 17 support, a Family Help Lead Practitioner, multidisciplinary input and a Family Help plan. It also asks whether local authorities should be required to provide a support plan when a child returns home under a supervision order. These remained proposals, rather than settled statutory requirements, on 6 October 2026: the consultation closed on 4 September and the government response was expected in autumn 2026.
Nevertheless, the direction of travel is clear. Reunification is being repositioned as a core Family Help function, rather than work sitting exclusively in children-in-care, permanence or edge-of-care teams. That creates an important continuity principle: the child and family should not have to start again with a new assessment, plan and set of relationships at each organisational boundary. The Families First guide describes one assessment and one plan that evolve with the family, while the Family Help Lead Practitioner remains the main point of contact as needs and risks change.
Return home must be treated as supported permanence
The July 2026 Foundations Practice Guide captures the conceptual shift succinctly: “A return home is not a single event.” It is a process involving assessment, purposeful planning, shared decision-making and sustained support before, during and after the child returns. This gives DCSs a more useful definition of successful reunification: not simply discharge from care, but safe family life that remains stable while children and parents recover from separation, rebuild relationships and manage future stress.
The practical implication is that reunification planning should begin much earlier than the final decision to return a child. Work with parents should continue after removal; family time should be purposeful; family networks should be identified and strengthened; and the causes of care entry should be actively addressed. The Foundations review found support was most acceptable and workable when it was tailored, holistic and delivered through trusting, consistent professional relationships. It highlighted housing, poverty, mental health, substance use, parenting, relationships and wider family support as interconnected rather than separable problems.
The following diagram illustrates what that end-to-end pathway requires.
Figure 1: Reunification should be managed as an end-to-end permanence pathway: assessment, family-network work and multidisciplinary support continue before, during and after the child returns home, with workforce stability and leadership as core enablers.
Post-return support is therefore not an optional aftercare offer. It is part of the permanence intervention itself. The early weeks may expose difficulties that could not be fully replicated through family time: changed roles, loyalty conflicts, disrupted routines, sibling relationships, school transitions, parental confidence and the emotional impact of leaving carers. Foundations found moderate-confidence evidence that abrupt endings leave families unsupported and vulnerable, while families valued gradual transitions and continued professional relationships.
This does not mean every family requires the same service for the same period. It means support should be needs-led rather than automatically withdrawn because the placement has formally ended or the care order has been discharged. Some families will require a short, stepped-down offer. Others may need long-term therapeutic, practical or specialist input, with a clear route to intensify support without waiting for a new crisis or referral threshold.
The evidence is encouraging, but it must not be overstated
The 2026 Foundations systematic review brought together 73 studies: 26 contributed causal evidence, including six that also contributed implementation evidence, while 53 contributed implementation or qualitative findings. Across 112 outcomes, the overall effect of reunification interventions was small but statistically significant, with a standardised mean difference of 0.253. A more focused analysis of 17 studies found a positive effect on children remaining at home and avoiding re-entry to care, with an SMD of 0.32.
That is sufficient to justify investment in structured support, but not to declare a single winning model. No intervention type consistently outperformed the others. Tentative findings favoured longer-duration, community-based and holistic approaches, while the implementation evidence emphasised robust assessment, realistic planning, trusted relationships and support before, during and after return home.
The limitations matter. Most effectiveness studies were conducted in the United States; only one was from England, and most were judged to have a moderate-to-serious risk of bias. Evidence about child safety, wellbeing, parental wellbeing, equity and cost-effectiveness was much weaker than evidence about remaining at home or avoiding care re-entry. The review therefore supports a direction of practice, not a licence to transplant an overseas programme without local testing, implementation support and outcome evaluation.
For DCSs, the defensible conclusion is that structured reunification support is better supported by evidence than unsupported return home, but local authorities must still examine who benefits, what is delivered, with what fidelity and for how long. Local dashboards should distinguish a return home from a stable return, and stability from broader wellbeing. Care re-entry, safety, education, emotional health, family relationships and the child’s own account of life at home all matter.
Home Again showed how far local infrastructure had to develop
The 2024 Home Again research remains the clearest national survey of local authority reunification practice before the 2026 policy changes. It received responses from 75 of England’s then 153 children’s services authorities. The authors were explicit that the sample was not nationally representative and may have been positively selected because many respondents were already interested in developing reunification practice.
Even with that caveat, the findings were stark. Fifty-six per cent of respondents had no reunification policy or strategy and only 19% had a standalone reunification team. Although 74% reported using a reunification tool or framework, only 39% analysed stability data and just 23% analysed the support provided before or after reunification. That means many areas could describe activity but could not reliably connect the nature, duration and quality of support to children’s outcomes.
The demand for additional support was equally important. Seventy-eight per cent wanted to provide more pre-reunification support and 63% wanted to offer more after return home. Among those wanting to increase pre-return support, 69% identified funding and 65% recruitment and retention as barriers. Among respondents wanting more post-return support, 79% cited funding, 71% insufficient specialist services and 65% recruitment and retention. These are survey findings, not official workforce statistics, but they identify the operational constraints experienced by the authorities delivering reunification.
The survey also found that 94% offered some post-reunification support, but its duration varied: 11% offered up to three months, 23% up to six months, 12% up to one year and 48% could continue beyond a year where needed. The strategic question is therefore not simply whether a council has an offer. It is whether families can access the right intensity and expertise, whether support follows need rather than administrative status, and whether leaders know what difference it makes.
Families First is also a workforce reform
The latest official workforce statistics provide a more nuanced picture than a simple crisis narrative. At 30 September 2025, local authorities employed 36,200 FTE child and family social workers, 5.4% more than a year earlier. Vacancies fell to 6,000 and the vacancy rate to 14%, down from 20% in 2022. Turnover fell to 12%, while the number of agency social workers dropped to 5,400 and the agency rate to 13%, both the lowest recorded since the series began in 2017.
Progress should be recognised, but the remaining pressures are substantial. Around three-quarters of vacancies were still covered by agency workers, and roughly one-third of directly employed social workers had less than two years’ continuous service with their current authority. That is a measure of local-authority tenure, not total professional experience, but it indicates the scale of organisational churn with which local practice systems must contend. The national average caseload was 15.2, although DfE cautions that the measure does not reflect differences in case complexity.
This is particularly significant for reunification because continuity is not merely a workforce preference. It is part of the intervention. Children and parents are being asked to rebuild trust after separation, engage honestly with risk and accept continuing support from the organisation that may previously have removed the child. Repeated changes of practitioner can weaken assessment, disrupt relationships and reduce the likelihood that emerging difficulties will be identified early. Foundations explicitly identifies high caseloads, staff turnover and workforce instability as barriers to trust, consistency and long-term support.
Nor can Families First be delivered simply by recruiting more social workers into existing structures. The programme requires Family Help Lead Practitioners from different disciplines, multidisciplinary Family Help teams and expert Lead Child Protection Practitioners working within MACPTs. The programme guide expects workforce plans to be informed by population need and local harm profiles and to specify the knowledge, skills, supervision and governance required across qualified and alternatively qualified roles.
For reunification, that should translate into a deliberate capability model. Authorities need practitioners skilled in whole-family assessment, family-network practice, relational work, trauma, purposeful family time and transition planning. They also need access to adult mental health, domestic abuse, substance misuse, housing, education, SEND and therapeutic expertise. Some capability may sit in a dedicated team; elsewhere it may be a specialist hub, advanced-practice function or multidisciplinary resource wrapped around locality teams. The evidence does not establish one universally superior structure, but it does establish that fragmented referrals and inaccessible specialist provision undermine delivery.
Advanced practice and supervision are equally important. Decisions about return home require practitioners to hold safety, change, uncertainty and family rights simultaneously, avoiding both unmanaged optimism and excessive risk aversion. The National Framework expects supervisors to allocate work according to knowledge, skill and capacity and to provide frequent supervision that supports curiosity, reflection and learning. It also expects leaders to organise services so decisions are led by experienced practitioners.
Inspection now makes the workforce connection visible
Ofsted’s revised ILACS framework, effective from 1 April 2026, explicitly includes children who return home, family-help implementation and multidisciplinary practice within its scope. Inspectors consider whether children and families receive the support needed to remain together and avoid further care episodes, as well as the stability of professional relationships and the effectiveness of post-return support.
Workforce strategy is also inspection evidence. Ofsted may examine vacancies, agency use, experience, turnover, caseloads, supervision and workforce development. Its leadership criteria expect a workforce that is sufficient, suitably qualified, skilled and experienced, with workloads that allow meaningful relationships to develop. Reunification outcomes can therefore no longer be separated from recruitment, retention, supervision and organisational design.
Coventry offers a useful example and an important evidential caution
Coventry’s Reunification Project demonstrates what a purposeful local model can look like. Its approach combined assessment, safety planning, restorative and relational practice, therapeutic work, Family Group Conferences, practical assistance and support intended to last for as long as families needed it. Coventry’s annual reporting states that 52 children had returned home through the reunification focus between June 2021 and March 2025, while the number of children in care, excluding unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, reduced from 735 in 2021 to 614 in March 2025.
Earlier LGA reporting recorded 44 reunifications and more than £4 million in reported savings. Written evidence submitted to Parliament described Coventry’s figures as placement-cost avoidance: for 2023–24, it reported £3.634 million of avoided placement expenditure against £585,018 of team and associated costs, producing a modelled net impact of £3.049 million. These are valuable invest-to-save indicators, but they are council-reported case-study calculations, not an independent causal evaluation. They should not be presented as proof that the project alone produced either the reduction in care numbers or the financial benefit.
The larger lesson is not the headline saving. It is the operating assumption behind the model: getting children home may be the visible milestone, but keeping them home is the real work. That requires permission to invest flexibly, retain support beyond conventional service boundaries and use placement expenditure differently where doing so is safe and evidence-informed.
The strategic test for DCSs
For Directors of Children’s Services, the 2026 shift creates a clear leadership test. Is reunification visible in the permanence strategy, Family Help design, sufficiency plan, commissioning intentions, workforce strategy, quality-assurance framework and partnership arrangements? Can leaders identify children for whom return home should be explored, know which families are preparing for reunification, and track what happens at three, six, 12 and 24 months? Can practitioners reach specialist help quickly enough to prevent ordinary adjustment difficulties becoming another care crisis?
Most importantly, can the local workforce sustain the relationships on which the model depends? A reunification pathway without stable practitioners, reflective supervision, advanced expertise and multidisciplinary capacity risks becoming an administrative route out of care rather than a supported path to permanence.
Families First should therefore be understood as both a service reform and a workforce reform. The ambition to keep families together cannot be delivered simply through revised thresholds, structures or team names. It depends on who is recruited, how expertise is deployed, whether practitioners have the time and authority to do meaningful work, whether partners contribute real capacity, and whether support remains available after the child crosses the front door of the family home. Reunification deserves to sit alongside adoption, special guardianship and long-term fostering as a consciously planned permanence pathway. When it is safe and right for the child, the task is not simply to return them home. It is to help the family remain together safely, sustainably and with the relationships and support needed to thrive.
Evidence and policy position checked to 6 October 2026.
