Children in Care: Gone Too Far Report Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Butler-Sloss
Main Page: Baroness Butler-Sloss (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Butler-Sloss's debates with the Department for Education
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs I said in my initial response, it is the responsibility of local authorities to provide sufficiency within their boundaries. Of course there are exceptional cases, and I have touched, for example, on children who are gang-involved and need to be moved further from home for their safety, but the kind of co-ordination the noble Lord talked about is exactly what we want in practice.
My Lords, as we have heard, because these children are disturbed and many of them have suffered trauma, which is why they have been taken into care, there seems to be some urgency in this matter. They should be put, where possible, reasonably close to home. Can this not be speeded up?
We are going as fast as possible in this. Obviously, our foster caring strategy has had a very significant investment, and there is the additional £9 million we are putting into kinship care. The latter is building on some very successful pilots, so we want to speed up the things that work but make sure that we understand that they work first of all.