‘This system needs to fundamentally change’: Josh MacAlister

Josh MacAlister was appointed minister of state for children and families in September this year. 

He is the founder of Frontline, the fast-track graduate training programme for social work with children and families. In 2021 he stepped down as chief executive of the organisation to lead England’s Independent Review into Children’s Social Care.

He was made an OBE in the 2023 New Year’s Honours for services to vulnerable children and in the 2024 General Election became the MP for Whitehaven and Workington.

Here he speaks to PSW about his vision for children and families, and for social work…

What are your top three priorities as children and families minister?

Since coming into this role I've spent time meeting children, families and care-experienced adults, sitting with social workers, and listening to kinship and foster carers. Those conversations have reinforced what I learned during the review: this system needs to fundamentally change.

My first priority is building a care system rooted in love and stability. Too many children experience placement after placement, relationship after relationship. That's not childhood, that's crisis management. We need to deliver real connection and permanence, not just another placement. That means more foster homes, better support for kinship carers, and genuinely stable relationships that last. Boosting the number of foster homes for children is a personal priority. 

Second is delivering the Families First Partnership reforms. We must shift resources towards intensive support for families before crisis point. Last month we announced an extra £547 million, bringing total investment to £2.4 billion in the Families First programme. This isn't just about money; it's about fundamentally changing how families get help.

Third is supporting the workforce. I want to help build a substantially better professional development system for social workers. The job you do requires so much expertise and we very often leave social workers to discover the knowledge and skill that is needed through trial and error. That’s why we’re going to make big changes to post qualifying training so that we can help social workers build up their expertise more quickly. 
 

What was the most important message you gained from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care?

I spoke with thousands of care-experienced young people, foster carers, kinship carers, social workers and families across the country. I visited brilliant services showing what was possible and met people doing incredible work despite the constraints they face.
If I had to pick one thing, it's that we can fix the system and focus it on building lifelong loving relationships. So much of what the system does is focused on providing services, when what it needs to be about is nurturing the tribe that children need to grow up in.   

Your review called for a system reset. How will the government's reform agenda achieve this?

The reset we're delivering is about changing how the system works at every level, from national structures down to daily practice with families.
Nationally we now have the Children's Social Care National Framework, which sets out the clear goals that the system needs to achieve. The second part is about setting out the best available evidence through Practice Guides so that practitioners and services know what the best bet interventions are to achieve these goals. Alongside this, we are working with Ofsted so that every lever of inspection and improvement points in the same direction as the reform programme. 
This national infrastructure then helps local areas use extra money (the £2.4 billion investment), the Families First Programme and new laws and powers to implement whole-system transformation so that children and families are helped earlier and have better outcomes.

That means building multidisciplinary Family Help teams to provide intensive well evidenced help. Launching multi-agency child protection teams to intervene in a focused and confident way when there is significant harm. Finally, it’s about bringing family networks in to be part of the answer for a child before we reach the point of taking a child into care.

On the care system, we're fundamentally rethinking how care is provided: through regional care co-operatives, tighter oversight, and if needed, a profit cap. We cannot continue with a system where some providers prioritise shareholder returns over children's wellbeing.

Social workers feel overwhelmed by their workload and vacancy/turnover rates remain high. What's being done to ensure their wellbeing?

I don't underestimate how difficult this work is. I've sat with social workers managing impossible caseloads, making life-changing decisions under enormous pressure. You deserve better conditions and, frankly, children deserve you to have better conditions too.
It's encouraging that over the past two years, the number of social workers has grown while vacancies and caseloads have begun to decline. But I recognise there's more to do, and experiences vary enormously across the country.
We're taking action on several fronts. We're investing in training and development, especially for early-career social workers. At the NCASC conference, I committed to strengthening post-qualifying support and building clear career pathways that recognise the specialism needed for child protection work.
On agency use, which drains budgets and destabilises teams, we've taken decisive action through statutory guidance with regional price caps. Agency use has dropped from 17.9 per cent in 2023 to 16.2 per cent in 2024. That's progress, but there's more to do.
Workload is the other critical piece. In September, we published practical resources from the National Workload Action Group to help local authorities tackle this and retain talented people. This aligns completely with what I heard during the review: sufficiency, stability and quality in the workforce is essential to reset the system.
But here's what matters most: our reforms are designed to fundamentally change how teams work together. Family Help Lead Practitioners will wrap multi-disciplinary support around families, helping reduce duplication and sharing the load. Multi-agency child protection teams will embed social worker Lead Child Protection Practitioners alongside police, health, education and other partners – wrapping child protection expertise and support around you – so you're not carrying everything alone. 
As these reforms embed, we expect to see real improvements. We're monitoring this closely through the Families First Partnership programme. Social workers need to feel supported, not burned out – and that's what we're working towards.

The National Workload Action Group called for safe workloads and a national workforce strategy focused on retention. Will you implement this?

This aligns with what I heard during the review. 
We offer tools and resources that employers can use to recruit and retain social workers, including resources from the National Workload Action Group to address workload challenges.

Workload is an urgent challenge. I don't underestimate how difficult the work is, and I want social workers to feel supported. As our reforms become embedded, we expect to see changes in caseloads and workloads. Insights from the Families First Partnership programme are helping us monitor this.

Looking ahead, we'll engage extensively with social workers from across the country to inform our thinking on this issue.

Poverty, deprivation and structural inequality are linked to the need for children’s social care. Does that frustrate you and how can it be tackled?

Yes, deeply. During the review, I met families who were doing everything right but were still struggling against impossible odds. Too often, the most disadvantaged families are the ones who end up in crisis, not because they're failing their children, but because problems have been heaped on one another and stress gets too much. 

Poverty is often a part of this story for families. That’s why I’m really pleased that our government is making changes that will lift a record level of 550,000 children out of poverty in this parliament.

But I also know that rates of poverty can never be an excuse for poor quality services. Even when rates of deprivation are taken into account, we see enormous differences in outcomes for children and families with a social worker depending on the quality of leadership and practice. So we’re taking national action on poverty, but that should mean that the spotlight to improve will be brighter. 

Can you give us a vision of what the children’s social care system will look like in ten years’ time?

In ten years, a child growing up in this country should experience something fundamentally different from what too many children experience today.
Families will get help early, really early, through Family Help teams that wrap around them before crisis hits, before things spiral. No child falling through the cracks because we weren't there soon enough.

Where children need protection, integrated multi-agency child protection teams will operate in every area as genuine centres of expertise. Social workers, police, health professionals and educators working side by side with confidence, speed and wisdom to keep children safe.

Families themselves will be at the heart of every decision about their children, working in true partnership with their own family networks, with Family Group Decision Making embedded as standard practice, not an optional extra.

For children who need care, there'll be a choice of various different types of foster families, where these carers show strong peer support and a human system that treats them with respect.

Kinship carers will be recognised and resourced. Right now, too many extended family members who step in are left financially penalised and emotionally drained. That has to change. They're making an extraordinary contribution and deserve support on par with foster carers.Care-experienced people will have had an experience of a system that builds a tribe around them that lasts for a lifetime. Care will always make rather than break important bonds, and it will set young care experienced people up for success with a safe home base, quality work and good health. 
That's the system we're working to build. It won't happen overnight, but it's possible and it's what children and families deserve.