Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 12
12
Accepted
Develop comprehensive strategy for children at risk of extra-familial harm, including professional training.
Conclusion
The Department for Education must put in place a strategy for supporting children and young people at risk of extra-familial harm. This should include: better training for professionals to spot and respond to extra- familial risks; ensuring that young people and their families know where to go to access support; and improving approaches to ensuring that families can stay together as much as possible, for example by supporting them to move home when needed. (Recommendation, Paragraph 28)
Government Response Summary
The government outlines a multi-pronged strategy including updated statutory guidance, multi-agency Practice Principles, embedding reforms through the Families First Partnership Programme, committing to specialist training for professionals, and strengthening multi-agency working through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
We have strengthened the multi-agency response to extra-familial harm through updated statutory guidance (Working Together to Safeguard Children, 20238), which now explicitly recognises harm outside the home and mandates coordinated safeguarding responses. This is supported by the multi-agency Practice Principles for responding to child exploitation and extra-familial harm, developed with input from professionals and those with lived experience (published in March 2023). These principles, alongside findings from Durham University’s Risk Outside the Home (ROTH) pathway pilots (published March 2025), have informed expectations for local 8 Working together to safeguard children 2023: statutory guidance safeguarding partners, including working with families as protective partners and tailoring responses to local contexts to create safety for children. Through the Families First Partnership Programme, we are embedding reforms to family help and child protection, including for children at risk of harm in the community and online, including multi-agency child protection teams. We have consulted on new post-qualifying standards and social work induction to help ensure the workforce has the right knowledge and skills to support and protect children, including those facing harm outside the home, and we also have committed to developing specialist child sexual abuse and exploitation training for social workers and other members of the children’s services workforce. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will further strengthen multi-agency working and information sharing, ensuring education settings are fully integrated into safeguarding arrangements. Together, these reforms aim to keep families together wherever safe and possible, while ensuring children are protected from harm wherever it occurs.