Reflections from Labour Conference: Children at risk of harm need to be front and centre
I came back from Liverpool last week with a full notebook and a long list of people to email. Labour conference felt like it had new life breathed into it, with Andy Burnham only two months into his leadership.
It’s always a brilliant space to feel energised about the future. Alongside the networking with MPs and ministers, my highlight is hearing from third sector organisations achieving remarkable things. This year that included a nursery group CEO fighting for every child’s right to nutritious food, and a group of 15-year-olds campaigning for their peers across the globe to access education. They remind you why we do what we do, and how brilliantly determined people are to make society a bit better.
But I came away wanting more.
The gap
There was little conversation about children’s social care. Burnham was right to focus on a national care service to reform adult social care in his speech, and that will be such a relief to the many people stretched every day caring for other people’s parents and friends. But what about children?
Children in England face risks that are growing and becoming more complex each year:
- Over 400,000 children are classed as in need – roughly 1 in every 30 children (Department of Education, 2025).
- 49,400 children are the subject of a child protection plan because they are assessed as being at risk of significant harm (Department of Education, 2025).
Exploitation is part of this picture, with the Home Office estimating that 15,500 children were identified as at risk or involved in child criminal exploitation last year.
And so is online harm. More than 7,000 ‘sexual communication with a child’ offences were recorded by police last year (2023/24) – up 89% since 2017/18 (NSPCC, 2024).
These are the children who most need us to pay attention.
I was glad to hear from young people at several events, and from the Family Rights Group and the children’s minister on the importance of lifelong links. The voices of care-experienced young people should be at the forefront of decision makers’ minds. Yet the conversation about children at risk of harm needed to be far more prominent than it was.
What gives me hope
National reforms to children’s social care are under way, and that is welcome. At Frontline, we’re working with partners across the country, each at a different point in their transformation journey, to put those reforms into practice. That’s exciting and something that gives me hope when thinking about the future of the sector.
Our part is the workforce. Children’s outcomes depend on the quality of the social workers and other professionals supporting them, so we recruit and train outstanding people and equip them to make a real difference to children and families.
What more needs to be done
Reform is only the start. We need to:
- control and limit the risk of harm online
- keep children safe in schools and in their communities by strengthening work with other agency professionals
- give families who need extra help the support to stay together
- make sure children who don’t have anyone fighting for them have someone on their side.
What we’re doing about it
At Frontline, we’re going to keep bringing this conversation to the front, so that children at risk of harm are prioritised and decision makers can see how much supporting children in care matters.
If you want to be part of it, I’d love to hear from you.