This study aims to explore how local authority child and family practitioners understood and implement the contextual safeguarding approach focusing, in particular, on what practitioners felt supported and hindered implementation.

A lack of basic resources and financial difficulties affect many families and increase risks to children. Social workers’ ability to help is limited by scarce resources, and managers usually control the financial and material help that is available, making it difficult to access directly. This article reports on a mixed methods evaluation of ‘devolved budgets’ (DBs), an intervention where social workers could use up to £10,000 to help families directly and reduce the need for children to enter care.