Children in Care

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[John Whitby]

I recognise that children go to placements with plastic bags, and it is heartbreaking. What a fabulous thing the hon. Member has raised.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that approximately 3.8 million people experienced destitution in 2022, including approximately 1 million children—nearly triple the number in 2017.

The second factor was the withdrawal of universal early help. Sure Start was withdrawn at different speeds and to differing degrees around the country, as local authorities removed their discretionary spending due to a loss of revenue support from the previous Government. It went from being a universal service to a targeted one. The spending on early help is now £1.8 billion a year less than it was in 2010. Here is the kicker: we are now spending more on children’s residential placements than we are on early help.

Early help did exactly what it said on the tin: it provided parents with health and wellbeing support, parenting advice, childcare and learning, and support for children with special needs. There were benefits to social care and to health. Indeed, an Institute for Fiscal Studies study found that Sure Start prevented so many children from being hospitalised that it saved the NHS the equivalent of a third of the entire Sure Start budget. The IFS also stated that Sure Start almost certainly delivered benefits significantly greater than its cost.

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a moving account of the structural factors that underpin the rise in personal trauma that has led to more children in the care system. Those placed in the formal care system get access to therapeutic support directly, whereas those placed with kinship carers do not have the same level of support, often because of anomalies in how they are treated. Does my hon. Friend agree that now is a good time to review the level of therapeutic support available to those in kinship care, who might have experienced exactly the same personal trauma as those in the more formal care system?

[John Whitby]

I do agree. It appears as though the Government are expanding the services available to children in kinship care, and that sounds like a good thing. I would like every child in care to have therapeutic support, because they all need it. They have all been massively traumatised by something.

The next question is: why has the number of residential placements increased so much faster than the number of children in care? The answer is simple: the number of foster families has remained fairly flat in the same period, despite the significant efforts of authorities and independent fostering agencies to attract new carers.