Children in Care: Gone Too Far Report

Baroness Twycross Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

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.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, the report Gone Too Far highlights that almost four out of five children’s home places in England were provided by the private sector. Children’s homes are not proportionately spread out over the country, due to the homes often being built where it costs less to build them. This means that almost a quarter of children’s homes are in the north-west and just 6% in London. It is not enough to blame local authorities; what more are the Government going to do to address the scale of the problem and what more support will they give to local authorities to address this?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I really hope I did not sound to the House as if I was blaming local authorities. There needs to be reform of the system and we need to provide additional funding. We are providing funding through the £250 million capital funding and securing reform through the commissioning structure of the regional care co-operatives. Specifically on the noble Baroness’s question, I say that we are anticipating two new builds to complete by the end of 2026, one in London for 24 secure places and four step-down placements, and 18 secure placements and two step-downs in the West Midlands, areas where there has been none of that provision recently.