Phew

08/10/2026

🏫 Schools made over 130,000 referrals to children's social care in 2025. Only the police made more.

Yet schools won't become the fourth statutory safeguarding partner.

⚖️ Ministers rejected the idea, citing accountability and funding complexities, even though 69% of consultation respondents backed it.
📜 Instead, the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 names them "designated childcare or education agencies", a mandated role but not equal standing.
🗣️ The Children's Commissioner and the LGA have both pushed back.

Our latest blog breaks down:
✅ What ministers decided, and why
✅ What "designated agencies" means in practice
✅ Four steps partnerships can take now
✅ Why the wait before section 2 comes into force is an opportunity

Evidence capture needs to start now, not when the regulations land.

Read the full blog 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yKKhb0

Ministers declined to make education a fourth statutory safeguarding partner alongside the local authority, the police and the NHS.

05/10/2026

🧩 "We have arrangements in place" is no longer enough.

Working Together 2026 asks safeguarding partnerships a harder question: can you show, with tangible evidence, that your multi-agency arrangements are improving practice and outcomes?

📋 Describing a process isn't the same as demonstrating impact.
🏡 Family Help and Family Hubs put joined-up working in plain view, because families feel it when it isn't working.
🔍 Section 11, Section 175 and Section 157 audits are where that evidence starts.

Our latest blog covers:
✅ What actually changed in 2026
✅ The gap between describing and demonstrating
✅ How self-assessment and audits build your evidence base
✅ Why consistent tooling makes assurance easier
✅ The practical questions every partnership should be asking now

Read the full blog 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yKH350

01/10/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us last week 🙌

🏫 One standard across every school is easy to write into a policy. Proving it's working is the hard part.

🔍 That's exactly what we dug into at our webinar - One Trust, One Standard: Proving KCSIE 2026 Is Working in Every School. We also weoclmed some clips from Dr. Jon Neeham from Oasis Community Learning and Brian Duffy from Shaw Education Trustt.

During our webinar hosted by Lucy Cordery-Vizor we covered:
✅ Moving from policy to practice under KCSIE 2026
✅ Auditing safeguarding at scale
✅ Spotting gaps before Ofsted, or an incident, does
✅ Turning oversight into action

The full session is now available on demand! Ready for you to watch in your own time or send to a colleague.

Watch it here 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yKCG50

30/09/2026

No tender needed. 🏛️ Phew is now on G-Cloud 15.

G-Cloud is the government's framework for buying cloud software. Every supplier on it has already been checked, so public sector teams can buy with far less paperwork.

🤝 You can buy our products straight from the Digital Marketplace, by direct award
🌐 For the first time, that includes our Website Design and Development service
📅 Contracts can run for up to six years, so you can plan properly

If procurement has ever stalled a project, this one's for you.

In our latest article we cover:
✅ What G-Cloud is and how it works
✅ What you can buy from Phew
✅ How to find us on the Digital Marketplace (Lot 2b)
✅ What changes when G-Cloud 14 ends on 28 October

Read it now 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yKFDd0

29/09/2026

Your audit ratings now speak the same language as Ofsted. 🎯

September's Audits update brings clearer ratings, action plans respondents can update themselves, and a bit more control behind the scenes.

📊 Ratings and reporting
✅ New five-point Ofsted scale, from Exceptional to Urgent improvement
✅ Ofsted colours and scores on your reports, with a key
✅ Existing audits move across automatically

📋 Action plans
✅ Respondents can complete, comment on and add actions straight from the Actions report
✅ Changes sync back to the audit and flow through to exports

⚙️ Set-up
✅ Schedule notification emails by date and time
✅ New reference field for organisation or cost codes, ready to map to other systems

Plus three bug fixes 🐞

Full release notes 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yyQnF0

28/09/2026

🏅 Three ISO standards. One way of working.

Phew is now certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 27001, all achieved together.

🔒 ISO 27001 is independent proof that your data, and the sensitive safeguarding information you trust us with, is protected.
📋 ISO 9001 confirms consistent processes and reliable service.
🌱 ISO 14001 shows we actively monitor and reduce our environmental impact.

Nobody asked us to do this. We chose to, because being accountable and proactive is how we want to work with the partnerships, boards and organisations we support.

"Achieving ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001 together shows our commitment to quality, sustainability and security isn't three separate promises, it's one way of working." - Matthew Burgess

A big thank you to Stuart and the team for months of hard work behind the scenes 👏

Read the full story 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04yrz0W0

15/09/2026

🔓 Ever wondered what the greyed-out bits of your website admin actually do?

From this month you can find out. Every tool the Phew framework offers now appears in your admin menu, with a padlock on anything not in your package.

🖱️ One click and you can build a single example post to see how it works.

Six areas are now open to try:
✅ Resources
✅ Documents
✅ Polls
✅ Threshold Framework
✅ Guide Questions
✅ Glossary

Handy when you are planning future site developments and want to know what is possible.

Also landing this month: three accessibility fixes moving the framework further towards WCAG 2.2 AA, and a couple of small bug fixes. ♿

🚀 Read the full release 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04xgq6n0

02/09/2026

The Phew September LMS release is live 🚀

📊 If you plan sessions, you can now see places booked and places left straight from the Occurrence view. No opening every session to check where it stands.

Here's what else is in the September release:
✅ Clearer messaging for delegates restricted from booking, at every stage
✅ Delegates can change their own password from their account screen
✅ Pre-course evaluation links now included in booking confirmations
✅ Action log records when an admin emails a delegate
✅ Admins can now set up 2FA using an Authenticator app, adding a second layer of protection
✅ Blocked-completion e-learning can now be previewed

Full release notes 👉 https://hubs.ly/Q04wdDdS0

&Development

28/08/2026

🧱 We’ve never taken playing with LEGO® quite so seriously. Matthew didn’t need asking twice when the chance came up to build with bricks and call it work!

🤝 When people build with their hands, they think differently. Our team across product, operations and service staff worked to shape a brand-new product from first principles. Joined by Jane Banks from Bedford Borough Family Hubs as our customer voice for the day.

💡 Building with your hands surfaces the things a standard requirements meeting never gets to. Priorities shift. Assumptions get challenged. Quiet voices get heard.

Facilitated by Matthew Vizor (Advizor) and Paul Inness (Intensive Works), the session covered:
✅ Individual builds of each person's single most critical requirement
✅ A negotiated shared model, the whole room owned
✅ Mapping the "agents" around it: end users, legacy systems, regulation, security threats
✅ Stress-testing the model against real-world scenarios

Jane described it as having "a direct seat at the table" rather than reviewing something after it was already built.

As Matthew Burgess put it: "Bringing a customer into the room, alongside the people who'll build, support and secure the product, means we're designing with foresight, not just for today's brief."

Find out how it worked here 👉 https://hubs.li/Q04vFnSk0

25/08/2026

We're live today! 🚀

At 12:30 pm we're unpacking how Family Hubs evidence that multi-agency working is genuinely happening, and standing up to scrutiny.

Last-minute spots are still open. Join us for 30 focused minutes 👉https://hubs.li/Q04sL-RX0