Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking in response to the final report of the Competition and Markets Authority's children’s social care market study published on 10 March 2022, particularly with regard to the finding on excessive charging by private providers of residential care homes for children in public care.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The number of looked-after children in the care of their local authority has increased by 2% to 83,840 at 31 March 2023 from 82,080 last year. The number of children in children’s homes has increased by 16% since 2019.
The department knows that the care system does not currently work for every child and that there are not enough of the right homes in the right places for children in care, resulting in some children living far from where they call home. Moving a child away is not a decision to be taken lightly and there are legislative safeguards around this. Directors of Children’s Services are required to sign off each decision and Ofsted can challenge where they believe poor decisions are being made. This is to encourage local authorities to place children locally wherever possible.
As the Competition and Markets Authority found in their 2022 market study, the largest private providers are making materially higher profits and charging materially higher prices than would be expected if the market was functioning effectively. The department recognises these issues, particularly around large providers with complex ownership structures, and agrees that sometimes placement costs can be too high.
In February 2023, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which sets out a broad, system-wide transformation. This can be accessed attached. As part of this strategy, the department is:
Finally, the department is supporting kinship families through the first ever national kinship care strategy, which is backed by the following funding: £20 million in 2024/25; over £36 million in a fostering recruitment and retention programme this Spending Review; and £160 million over the next three years to deliver the department’s adoption strategy, entitled ‘Achieving excellence everywhere’.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking to achieve a better distribution of residential care homes for children so that they are not placed great distances from their families, friends and school.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The number of looked-after children in the care of their local authority has increased by 2% to 83,840 at 31 March 2023 from 82,080 last year. The number of children in children’s homes has increased by 16% since 2019.
The department knows that the care system does not currently work for every child and that there are not enough of the right homes in the right places for children in care, resulting in some children living far from where they call home. Moving a child away is not a decision to be taken lightly and there are legislative safeguards around this. Directors of Children’s Services are required to sign off each decision and Ofsted can challenge where they believe poor decisions are being made. This is to encourage local authorities to place children locally wherever possible.
As the Competition and Markets Authority found in their 2022 market study, the largest private providers are making materially higher profits and charging materially higher prices than would be expected if the market was functioning effectively. The department recognises these issues, particularly around large providers with complex ownership structures, and agrees that sometimes placement costs can be too high.
In February 2023, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which sets out a broad, system-wide transformation. This can be accessed attached. As part of this strategy, the department is:
Finally, the department is supporting kinship families through the first ever national kinship care strategy, which is backed by the following funding: £20 million in 2024/25; over £36 million in a fostering recruitment and retention programme this Spending Review; and £160 million over the next three years to deliver the department’s adoption strategy, entitled ‘Achieving excellence everywhere’.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that young children in public care are not placed in unregistered accommodation.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The number of looked-after children in the care of their local authority has increased by 2% to 83,840 at 31 March 2023 from 82,080 last year. The number of children in children’s homes has increased by 16% since 2019.
The department knows that the care system does not currently work for every child and that there are not enough of the right homes in the right places for children in care, resulting in some children living far from where they call home. Moving a child away is not a decision to be taken lightly and there are legislative safeguards around this. Directors of Children’s Services are required to sign off each decision and Ofsted can challenge where they believe poor decisions are being made. This is to encourage local authorities to place children locally wherever possible.
As the Competition and Markets Authority found in their 2022 market study, the largest private providers are making materially higher profits and charging materially higher prices than would be expected if the market was functioning effectively. The department recognises these issues, particularly around large providers with complex ownership structures, and agrees that sometimes placement costs can be too high.
In February 2023, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which sets out a broad, system-wide transformation. This can be accessed attached. As part of this strategy, the department is:
Finally, the department is supporting kinship families through the first ever national kinship care strategy, which is backed by the following funding: £20 million in 2024/25; over £36 million in a fostering recruitment and retention programme this Spending Review; and £160 million over the next three years to deliver the department’s adoption strategy, entitled ‘Achieving excellence everywhere’.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they are taking to tackle the increase of children being taken into public care.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The number of looked-after children in the care of their local authority has increased by 2% to 83,840 at 31 March 2023 from 82,080 last year. The number of children in children’s homes has increased by 16% since 2019.
The department knows that the care system does not currently work for every child and that there are not enough of the right homes in the right places for children in care, resulting in some children living far from where they call home. Moving a child away is not a decision to be taken lightly and there are legislative safeguards around this. Directors of Children’s Services are required to sign off each decision and Ofsted can challenge where they believe poor decisions are being made. This is to encourage local authorities to place children locally wherever possible.
As the Competition and Markets Authority found in their 2022 market study, the largest private providers are making materially higher profits and charging materially higher prices than would be expected if the market was functioning effectively. The department recognises these issues, particularly around large providers with complex ownership structures, and agrees that sometimes placement costs can be too high.
In February 2023, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which sets out a broad, system-wide transformation. This can be accessed attached. As part of this strategy, the department is:
Finally, the department is supporting kinship families through the first ever national kinship care strategy, which is backed by the following funding: £20 million in 2024/25; over £36 million in a fostering recruitment and retention programme this Spending Review; and £160 million over the next three years to deliver the department’s adoption strategy, entitled ‘Achieving excellence everywhere’.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the Children's Commissioner report Missing Children, Missing Grades, published on 2 November; and what steps they are taking in response.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Improving attendance is one of the department’s priorities. The report provides vital insight into the relationship between attendance and attainment. The recommendations echo the department’s ‘support first' approach to attendance and its goal to make attendance everyone's business. In response, the department continues to implement its comprehensive plan to address the issue.
The department has published guidance encouraging all schools and local authorities to adopt the practices of the most effective schools. All schools are now expected to publish an attendance policy and appoint an attendance champion. Local authorities are expected to meet termly with schools to agree individual plans for at risk children. 86% of schools subscribe to the department’s attendance data tool to spot at risk pupils. The department’s attendance hubs now support 800 schools benefiting over 400,000 pupils.
These measures are in addition to the implementation of the special educational needs and disability (SEND) reforms which will ensure that children with SEND receive high quality, early support in attending school wherever they live in England.
The department’s approach is starting to turn the tide, with recent data showing there were 380,000 fewer pupils who were persistently absent from or not attending school in the 2022/23 academic year compared to 2021/22, but absence levels remain too high.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the number of care leavers who have access to university education.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government is committed to ensuring that all care leavers are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes. The ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ strategy sets out the department’s plans to reform the children’s social care system, including improving the education, employment and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. This includes, from 2027, a year-on-year narrowing of the gap in care leaver higher education participation rates compared to the general population.
We will introduce a gold standard accreditation scheme for further and higher education institutions supporting care leavers, working with an expert advisory group to develop the accreditation in partnership with the sector, and will consult on plans to expand the Virtual School Head role to include children in care and care leavers up to age 25. Local authorities must also provide a £2,000 bursary for care leavers who go to university.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the 130,000 children of homeless families are receiving an education in school.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
All children of compulsory school age, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled to a full-time education which is suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs that they may have. The department consulted and implemented changes to the statutory School Admissions Code in 2021 to improve the in-year school admissions process and fair access protocols. Fair access protocols are the safety net to secure school places in-year for vulnerable and unplaced children, where the in-year admissions process fails. In those changes, the department identified a list of categories of children who are eligible for placement in fair access, which included children who are homeless. The school admissions code can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-admissions-code--2.
The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance expects schools, local authorities and partners to work with pupils and parents to remove any barriers to school attendance by building strong and trusting relationships, and working together to put the right support in place. This guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance. In all cases, schools should be sensitive and should avoid stigmatising pupils and parents. They should talk to pupils and parents to understand what they think would help improve their attendance. This allows individual approaches that meet an individual pupil’s specific needs.
All schools should be calm, orderly, safe, and supportive environments where pupils can thrive and reach their potential in safety and dignity. Teachers know their pupils best and are in the best position to identify their needs and to plan which approaches will meet them most effectively.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of children placed in local authority care.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department published its plans to reform children’s social care on 2 February 2023 in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147317/Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf.
‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ sets out how the department will help families to overcome challenges at an early stage, keep children safe and make sure those in care have stability, long-term loving relationships and opportunities for a good life. Over the next two years, the department will address urgent issues facing children and families now and lay the foundations for a whole system reform.
A central aim of the reform programme is to keep more children safely with their families, where this is possible. The department will invest more than £45 million over the next two years through its ‘Families First for Children Pathfinder’, which will test the implementation of reforms across Family Help, Child Protection, and Family Network Support Packages. This will inform wider roll out.
Whilst the government recognises the importance of reducing the number of placements for children in the care system, placements can be the right option for some children. The strategy also sets out how the department is prioritising work with local authorities to ensure children have access to the right placements at the right time.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the rate of adoption of children in care, when adoption is in the child’s best interests.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As set out in the department’s Adoption Strategy: Achieving Excellence Everywhere, we are committed to improving the matching of approved adopters with children waiting to be found new homes. The strategy can be found attached.
£5 million has been committed for 2022 to 2025 to support Regional Adoption Agency Leaders to focus specifically on reducing the number of children who wait over 18 months for homes from the time of a court placement order being given. Some progress has already been made. This number has fallen from 390 in March 2020 to 240 in September 2022, but the department wants to see further and faster progress.
In addition, government funded recruitment campaigns are helping to provide a greater sufficiency of adopters, as well as targeted campaigns with a focus on recruiting adopters who are more likely to give a loving home to the children who wait the longest to be adopted.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce persistent truanting in schools.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government has a comprehensive attendance strategy to ensure that absence is minimised. The department has recently published guidance setting out how we expect schools, trusts and local authorities to work together to improve attendance, which is available in the attached document.
The guidance is clear that schools should develop and maintain a whole school culture that promotes the benefits of high attendance, have a clear school attendance policy, and have effective day to day processes in place to follow-up absence.
The guidance sets out that schools are expected to use attendance data to identify patterns of poor attendance (at individual and cohort level) as soon as possible so that all parties can work together to resolve them before they become entrenched. To help schools to do this, the department has recently launched new functionality which allows mainstream schools that are sharing daily attendance data to compare attendance with other schools within their own local authority. This can be seen under the ‘compare your attendance tab’ via GOV.UK’s ‘View your education data’ site at: https://viewyourdata.education.gov.uk/. The tool will help schools to identify strengths and priorities and signpost to additional guidance and support.
The department has employed expert attendance advisers who are playing an important role working closely with local authorities and a number of multi-academy trusts with higher levels of persistent absence to review their current practice and support them to develop plans to improve. The department has also recently launched a £2.32 million attendance mentor pilot to deliver intensive one-to-one support to a group of persistently and severely absent pupils. The pilot will run for three years supporting a total of 1,665 pupils. The findings from this pilot should enable schools, trusts, and local authorities to address persistent and severe absence more effectively.
My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, has also established an Alliance of national leaders from education, children’s social care and other relevant services to work together to raise school attendance and reduce persistent absence. Schools and local authorities can also use a range of measures to provide support for and/or sanctions against parents when their child’s irregular attendance in school becomes a problem. These measures are used to reinforce parents’ responsibilities and to support them in improving their child’s attendance at school.