Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they consider the Music and Dance Scheme to have successfully enabled social mobility through arts education; and whether they intend to provide a full Ā£4 million increase to the funding of the scheme recommendedĀ to reflect the costs of delivering specialist education.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Music and Dance Scheme (MDS) remains central to providing access to specialist performing arts education for high achieving young musicians and dancers, through means-tested bursaries to attend one of eight private schools or one of 20 Centres for Advanced Training (CAT). For the 2024/25 academic year, this includes paying fees in full for 23% of MDS students attending schools and 57% of students attending CATs, for those from families on the lowest incomes.
The scheme will be allocated future funding of Ā£37.8 million for the 2026/27 academic year. This is a Ā£1.3 million increase to the funding this academic year. We will confirm future funding for the 2027/28 academic year before the end of this calendar year.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a timetable for updating the Statutory Guidance on Promoting the Health and Wellbeing of Looked After Children.
Answered by Baroness Barran
The government gave a commitment to update the statutory guidance āPromoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after childrenā, and to extend it to care leavers up to age 25, in the āStable Homes, Built on Loveā strategy for the reform of childrenās social care. The update forms part of the wider mission in the strategy āto reduce the disparities in long-term mental and physical health outcomes and improve wellbeing for care-experienced peopleā. This commitment was reaffirmed in September 2023.
Work is underway to understand how the current guidance is working in practice and where changes are necessary. Timeframes will depend on the scope of changes needed. The Department for Education and Department for Health and Social Care will keep relevant stakeholders in the health and childrenās social care sectors updated as the work progresses.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whatĀ steps they are taking to increase investment in early intervention and prevention as part of childrenās social care reform.
Answered by Baroness Barran
The government has invested billions in local services. This year alone, the total social care grant for local government is over Ā£2 billion. In the āStable Homes Built on Loveā Strategy, the department outlined its plans to build on the strengths of current early help and Child in Need services, through the creation of Family Help.
The department is investing Ā£200 million in Childrenās Social Care reforms, including Ā£45 million for the Families First for Children Pathfinder programme, which will test how multi-disciplinary family help teams can improve the support that children and families receive. The pathfinder will inform the next stage of the departmentās reform programme which will look to deliver transformation more widely.
The department also announced over Ā£1 billion of funding for programmes to improve early help services, including delivering Family Hubs.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Josh MacAlister The independent review of childrenās social care, published on 23 May 2022; and what progress they have made in improving council-run homes in the childrenās social care system given the findings of that report.
Answered by Baroness Barran
In February 2023 the department published its consultation and implementation strategy, āStable Homes, Built on Loveā. This sets out the departmentās plans for a system-wide transformation of childrenās social care, and details how the department will help families overcome challenges, keep children safe, and make sure children in care have stable loving homes, long-term loving relationships, and opportunities for a good life.
To support local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure there is sufficient provision for children in their care, the department has announced Ā£259 million capital funding to maintain capacity and expand provision in both secure and open childrenās homes that provide high-quality, safe homes for some of the most vulnerable children and young people across England. The department has allocated a portion of the Ā£259 million capital funding to open childrenās homes enabling a total of 69 projects to be delivered, which will create an additional 350 beds across this sector.
The department has also committed to developing a core overarching set of Standards of Care for fostering, childrenās homes, and supported accommodation. This will help simplify the regulatory landscape, raise quality, and ensure there are consistent safeguards across different types of settings.
The department will develop a programme to support improvements in the quality of leadership and management in childrenās homes, including exploring proposals for a leadership programme to attract and train new talent.
In addition, the department is investing Ā£10 million to develop Regional Care Co-operatives (RCCs) to plan, commission and deliver childrenās social care placements. Through operating on a larger scale and developing specialist capabilities, the RCCs will be able to develop a wider range of places to meet childrenās needs better.
The department is also making good progress on addressing challenges relating to the retention and recruitment of social workers, which is key to supporting the delivery of the wider childrenās social care reforms. This includes introducing an Early Career Framework to better support newly qualified social workers to meet the challenges of child and family social work, increasing the number of social worker apprenticeships, and supporting local authorities with their retention and workload challenges. Alongside āStable Homes, Built on Loveā, the department also published a consultation on a set of rules for local authority engagement of agency child and family social workers. The response to this consultation was published on 25 October 2023 and sets out a set of national rules intended to increase workforce quality and sustainability. The department will consult on statutory guidance on the technical detail in Spring 2024. These reforms are in addition to the departmentās Ā£50 million annual investment in recruiting, training and developing the workforce.