Child Safeguarding

Baroness Sanderson of Welton Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The issue of children being out of school is an important one. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that schools are an incredibly important protective factor for many children. That is why we are so keen as a Government, public health permitting, to keep our schools open with a real focus on attendance and working very closely with schools and children’s social care so that where children are not in school that is followed up and properly understood. In terms of the details of the review in relation to Arthur’s own attendance, as I said, the terms of reference are being set at the moment and I am not aware of the details.

[Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)]

My Lords, there are so many distressing factors involved in Arthur’s death, but perhaps one of the most upsetting is that he had family who loved him and who raised their concerns. Can my noble friend the Minister say whether the Government will consider giving more focus to raising the awareness and status of kinship care, as recommended in The Case for Change?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope my noble friend will be pleased to know that in the Government’s independent review of social care we will be looking at how we can further support kinship families for all the reasons that my noble friend touched on. There are about 150,000 children in this country living in kinship care arrangements, so it is a really important element. In recent years, we have provided extra support to kinship carers who are looking after a child who was previously in care under a special guardianship order. Those carers can now access therapeutic services funded by the adoption support fund to help those children deal with the trauma that they have experienced. We have also recently changed the school admissions fair access protocol so that more children in kinship care will have access to schools that will support them with their kinship placement.