Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether local authority social care services are funded and equipped to meet the needs of the 621,880 children referred to them in 2024.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) for the 2025/26 financial year will grant councils in England access to over £69 billion in funding, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase on the 2024/25 financial year. Decisions on allocation of funding for all local authority-delivered services, including children’s social care, are for local authorities to take based on local need, priorities and statutory duties.
In recognition of the need to ensure local authorities have the resources needed to deliver good quality children’s social care services, the LGFS for 2025/26 provides two new grants for children and family services. A new Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant is set to be introduced, which will provide £270 million of new funding for investment in additional prevention activity through the implementation of Family Help and child protection reforms. The Children and Families Grant, worth £414 million, will also be available. This will consolidate several previous departmental children’s social care grants, including £253.5 million from the former Supporting Families Programme.
The government’s investment in 2025/26 is a significant step in our ambition to rebalance the children’s social care system and will enable local authorities to move towards financial sustainability and deliver improved outcomes for children and families.
Funding for future years will be subject to phase two of the spending review.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether all restrictions preventing local authorities from building new special education schools have been removed.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
Where a local authority identifies the need for a new school in its area, including a new special school, it must currently seek proposals to establish an academy (free school). This is known as the ‘free school presumption’. The free school presumption process is the main route by which local authorities establish new schools to meet the need for additional places.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will remove the legal presumption that all new schools are opened as academies, allowing local authorities to welcome proposals for all types of school and to put forward their own proposals, where they choose to do so. This will ensure new schools are opened by the provider with the best offer for local children and families. Ahead of the Bill receiving royal assent and coming into force, the free school presumption remains in place.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they are making in controlling the profits made by private organisations operating in the childcare sector.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
It is the department’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.
One of the signs of a healthy market is a range of providers offering choice and flexibility for parents. There is a vibrant mix of provision in the market, including schools, the private sector, voluntary and charitable organisations and childminders offering home-based care. The department keeps the structure of the market, and the financial health of providers, under close review.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the costs levied by private providers of special educational needs schools are being monitored and controlled.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The department does not monitor or collect data on independent schools’ finances, however these are published and publicly available for both commercial and charitable providers. Independent schools charge their own fees for education, health and care placements, and it is for the local authority to determine whether a placement offers value for money.
Independent special schools can play an important role in the special educational needs and disabilities system, particularly in meeting low-incidence needs. However, the department recognises that independent special schools have higher costs than maintained special schools and academies, both in commercial and charitable providers, and commissioners need to ensure placements are used appropriately.
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 chairs of family group conferences are fully trained.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The department knows that many local authorities have an existing family group decision making (FGDM) service in place, including many who use the family group conference model. In some local authorities, independent coordinators are recruited to facilitate or ‘chair’ FGDM meetings and, in other areas, social workers are trained to deliver the service.
Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the department is seeking to place a duty on local authorities to offer an FGDM meeting to all parents and those with parental responsibility whose children are on the edge of care, unless this is not in the best interests of the child. This will ensure that families have the opportunity to participate in planning and decision-making at this critical point.
As part of this, the department will be developing guidance about best practice in delivering FGDM. This will include guidance on how to ensure that facilitators of the FGDM process have the appropriate skills and training. We are conscious of the additional resources that local authorities will require to fulfil this measure, which may include recruiting or training extra staff. That is why this government has committed to an uplift of £13 million for the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant for 2025/26, which will be used to support the rollout of FGDM across the country for all families on the edge of care. This money can be used to expand a local authority’s existing service, including training additional facilitators for FGDM.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to figures released by the Office for National Statistics on 21 November showing that 946,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are not currently in education, employment or training, what steps they are taking to address this.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
This government is determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all our young people. We will act to prevent the damage caused to the lives of young people who are not in education, employment or training. The government recognises the complex, long-standing nature of the challenge, and will make a raft of changes to tackle it.
Young people are required to continue in education or training until they turn 18. We are preventing young people from losing touch with education or employment before the age of 18 through a guaranteed place in education and training for all 16 and 17-year-olds, expanded work experience and careers advice, action to tackle school attendance and improved access to mental health services for young people in England. Over £7.5 billion in 16 to 19 programme funding will be invested during the 2024/25 academic year, to pay for education for any 16, 17 or 18-year-olds in post-16 education.
£240 million has been announced to drive forward measures in the Get Britain Working White Paper. This includes a youth guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 in England to ensure that they can access quality training, educational opportunities or help to find work. Working with Mayoral Authorities, and building on existing provision and entitlements, we will test new ways of supporting young people into employment or training. To do this, we will mobilise eight place-based youth guarantee trailblazers with £45 million of funding in 2025/26.
The comprehensive package also includes: a new national jobs and careers service to help more people into work, foundation apprenticeships to give people a new route into skilled work, Get Britain Working Plans for the economically inactive, and the launch of Skills England to open new opportunities for young people.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to match-fund the incentive costs of Stepladder Plus, a money management and learning programme for 15–17 year olds in care operated by the Share Foundation.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
The department is committed to reforming the children’s social care system so that all children can grow up in stable and loving homes. To support this, the department has recently announced that it is investing an additional £44 million in kinship and foster care.
The King’s Speech on 17 July committed to a Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which will ensure our education and children’s social care systems transform lives for millions of children and young people in England. The department will use the Bill to deliver the government’s commitment on children’s social care.
The department wants to ensure that children leaving care have stable homes, access to health services, support to build lifelong loving relationships and are engaged in education, employment and training.
The department does not currently have any plans to provide match funding to incentivise children in care to participate in the Stepladder Plus programme.
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 services that aim to prevent children being taken into the care of local authorities.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
This government is committed to whole system reform of children’s social care to give hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve.
The department recognises that there is a strong evidence base for early intervention to support families to stay together and thrive, and this will be at the heart of its whole system reform of children’s social care.
This department also recognises the valuable and important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children. The government’s manifesto set out a commitment to working with local government to support children in care, including through kinship arrangements.
Through the £45 million Families First for Children pathfinder and Family Network Pilot, the government is testing the implementation of intensive whole family support in ten pathfinder local authorities. In these local authorities, multi-disciplinary teams are providing targeted support to help families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation.
These local authorities are also making greater use of family networks by involving them in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing practical and financial support via family network support packages to help keep children safe at home.
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 who are taken into the care of local authorities.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
This government is committed to whole system reform of children’s social care to give hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve.
The department recognises that there is a strong evidence base for early intervention to support families to stay together and thrive, and this will be at the heart of its whole system reform of children’s social care.
This department also recognises the valuable and important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children. The government’s manifesto set out a commitment to working with local government to support children in care, including through kinship arrangements.
Through the £45 million Families First for Children pathfinder and Family Network Pilot, the government is testing the implementation of intensive whole family support in ten pathfinder local authorities. In these local authorities, multi-disciplinary teams are providing targeted support to help families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation.
These local authorities are also making greater use of family networks by involving them in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing practical and financial support via family network support packages to help keep children safe at home.
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 who frequently fail to attend school.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Minister for Women and Equalities)
This government has been clear that absence from school is a key barrier to overcome, because if pupils are not attending school they cannot benefit from good teaching and learning.
Thanks to the efforts of the sector, there are more learners in school almost every day this year compared to last. However, with 1.6 million children still persistently absent, missing 10% of lessons or more, poor attendance remains a major challenge.
That is why the department will work with the sector to bring breakfast clubs to all primary schools, so that every child is in on time and ready to learn. The department will also introduce new annual Ofsted reviews of safeguarding, attendance, and off-rolling. The department will also tackle mental health issues among young people by providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.
This is in addition to activity to support schools and local authorities to tackle the school absence challenge. This includes:
Wider measures such as the pupil premium, the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision improvement plan, and the holiday activities and food programme also benefit attendance.