Our journey began in January 2015 when we secured £4.86m in grant funding from the Government’s children’s social care innovation programme to revolutionise our child protection services in the county. In the two years preceding the grant, we had taken a long hard look at our social care practice and identified the challenges we were facing.

Over the years, England’s child protection system has become increasingly adversarial. In Hertfordshire, we believed families would not be encouraged to change if they felt intimidated or sceptical. We needed to work to change that perception and encourage families to look at us as enablers who they want to engage with willingly.