The Department for Education has announced £8.4 million to expand Family Finding across England, with the aim of helping children in care and care leavers reconnect with relatives, former carers, teachers and other adults they regard as important. The department says the rollout forms part of the Enduring Relationships programme published on 4 June 2026 and follows the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. (gov.uk) This is not a standalone grant. The policy makes relationship permanence a service objective in its own right, rather than something dealt with only when a placement breaks down or a young person reaches leaving-care age. (gov.uk)
According to the Department for Education, Family Finding uses trained co-ordinators to work with care-experienced children and young people to identify who matters to them and whether contact can be rebuilt safely. The model is not restricted to birth family: former foster carers, teachers, social workers and other trusted adults are also within scope. (gov.uk) The department says it has funded 25 Family Finding programmes since 2023. Those schemes reportedly produced an average of nearly two additional meaningful relationships per participant, with more than a third reconnecting with immediate family members; the same announcement says a King’s College London study for the Centre for Homelessness Impact found one Family Finding approach reduced homelessness risk by 10 per cent. (gov.uk)
The legal backdrop matters. Section 23CZAA of the Children Act 1989, inserted by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, requires local authorities in England to assess whether Staying Close support is needed for former relevant children under 25. Where that support is required for welfare reasons, councils must provide support to help with suitable accommodation and access to services including health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment and participation in society. (legislation.gov.uk) That means the new Family Finding funding arrives in a system where relationship support is increasingly tied to statutory duties, not only discretionary practice. For directors of children’s services, the practical question is how Family Finding, pathway planning and Staying Close are aligned so that reconnection work does not stop at age 18. (gov.uk)
The 4 June announcement also says social workers and local authorities will be supported to place relationships at the centre of decision-making through stronger family group decision-making, support for reunification where safe, and wider use of Family Network Support Packages. Read alongside the Department for Education’s implementation plan published on 21 May, the direction is clear: councils are expected to build relationship-based practice into mainstream delivery rather than treat it as a separate specialist service. (gov.uk) For practice leaders, that points to changes in referral routes, commissioning and case oversight. Family Finding will need clear links to permanence planning, leaving-care teams, foster care sufficiency work and the local authority’s published offer to care leavers if the policy is to alter everyday decisions rather than remain a short-term programme line. (gov.uk)
The pressure on the system helps explain the policy emphasis. Official Department for Education statistics show 81,770 children were looked after by local authorities in England on 31 March 2025. The same release says 10 per cent experienced three or more placements during the year, while 22 per cent were living more than 20 miles from home. (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk) In that context, rebuilding family and community links is not peripheral to care planning. It is a response to a system in which placement instability and distance from home can weaken continuity, identity and access to adults who know the child well. That reading is an inference from the official statistics and the department’s stated purpose for Family Finding. (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)
The Family Finding rollout sits inside a broader reform package. The Department for Education links it to a drive to create 10,000 foster care places this Parliament, £2.4 billion for the Families First Partnership programme, a financial allowance pilot for kinship carers, and an expert-led review of children’s homes looking at specialisation, staff skills, qualifications, career development and leadership. (gov.uk) For local authorities and providers, that combination matters because placement sufficiency, workforce capability and enduring relationships are being treated as connected issues. The policy case being made by the department is that better family and network support should sit alongside earlier family help, stronger fostering capacity and a more specialised residential sector. (gov.uk)
Separately, the Department for Education opened a consultation on 2 June 2026 on statutory guidance for the new Information Sharing Duty, with responses due by 14 July 2026. The consultation page says the duty will apply from September 2026, while the 4 June press release says the new duty comes into force on 30 September 2026; together, those dates give councils and partner agencies a short implementation window over the summer. (consult.education.gov.uk) The Act requires relevant persons to disclose information where they consider it relevant to safeguarding or promoting a child’s welfare and where disclosure may facilitate those functions, unless they consider disclosure would be more detrimental to the child than non-disclosure. For safeguarding partners, schools, health bodies and commissioned providers, the immediate task is to review local protocols, draft agreements and frontline training before the statutory guidance is finalised. (legislation.gov.uk)