Families First Service Design & System Development

Turning Families First policy into practical local delivery

Interface supports local authorities to implement the Families First reforms by designing integrated Family Help systems that reflect local need and national expectations. Drawing on extensive experience from across England, we work alongside leaders and partners to turn national policy into practical, sustainable local delivery through implementation support, service design and organisational change.

Our implementation and service design support includes:

Strategic needs assessments that identify local strengths, challenges and opportunities for improvement.	Service design to develop operating models that reflect national expectations while meeting local need.
Implementation planning that provides a clear roadmap from vision through to delivery.	Integrated pathways that ensure children, young people and families receive coordinated support at the right time.
Governance and partnership development that strengthens leadership, accountability and collaborative decision-making.	Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) to embed family-led approaches.
Change management and workforce engagement that helps leaders and practitioners embed new ways of working.	Stakeholder engagement, co-design workshops and visioning events that build shared ownership and consensus across agencies.
Commissioning support, including service specifications and option appraisals.	Strategic challenge and critical friend support, providing independent advice and constructive challenge throughout implementation.

Our approach

Every local area is different, which is why we tailor our support to reflect local priorities, strengths and ambitions. Our approach is collaborative, pragmatic and flexible, combining practical implementation support with independent challenge, national insight and evidence-informed solutions that deliver sustainable improvement.

Case Studies

Supporting the Development of Family Hubs in the London Borough of Croydon

Croydon is developing its Family Hub model to strengthen early help, improve integrated working, and ensure children, young people and families can access the right support at the right time.

We designed and delivered a structured facilitation programme combining senior leadership sessions with large partnership events.

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Shropshire - Staff support & supervision

We provided a 2 day practical program for managers responsible for providing supervision for a staff team and those soon to be taking on a management role.
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Aberdeenshire C Change

C-Change is a structured, evidence based approach to assessing parental capacity to change in situations where the parenting is likely to be causing harm to their children. Aberdeenshire were interested in further improving quality of assessments and particularly to enable practitioners to move ‘stuck’ cases forwards and provide practitioners with greater confidence to intervene in families who could make initial changes but struggled to sustain parenting at a good enough level.
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Integrated Multi-Agency Front Door Services – Halton

Halton Borough Council is in the process of further developing and implementing an integrated multi-agency approach to supporting children, young people, families and vulnerable adults across the continuum from Early Intervention to statutory safeguarding services.
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