Children’s Social Care

Darren Paffey Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.

I thank and commend my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), the chair of the Education Committee, for leading the inquiry, securing the debate and making an incredibly powerful case as to why, particularly as we begin National Care Leavers Month, we must see action on children’s social care.

I welcome the Minister to his role, commend his work on the independent review of children’s social care, and congratulate him on being in the most powerful position possible to deliver on something that, tragically, was shelved for several years, until the new Government picked it up.

I am not only a proud member of the Committee that carried out this work, but as some know, I have a particular interest in this issue. For a number of years before being elected to this place, I was the cabinet member for children’s services and education in Southampton City Council. With help from many others, I tried to transform services that literally had life or death consequences for many children. It was a pleasure to do that, because I was once there myself: I grew up in foster care, and happily I was adopted. I am a big advocate of the life-transforming difference that the right care at the right time in the right circumstances can make, because had that not been the case for me, thanks to my parents, social workers and others along the way who made decisions on my behalf, I would not be standing here today.

In my maiden speech, I said that, of the many things we get involved with in Parliament, the one thing I want to do is be able to say to those to whom this report speaks, whose lives and circumstances it seeks to make better—those who are going through some of the most challenging times in life, who suffer the stigma of still being more likely to end up in prison than in university or in this place—that we will ensure they have the right support. I want that experience to forge in them a steely determination to achieve their full potential. Many of these recommendations are in that vein.

I was proud to bring a group of care leavers to Parliament earlier this week. I thank the Minister again for making time at the last moment, with no notice, to meet them, so that they could share their aspirations. Their voices were not only heard in this place; they went to the very heart of decision making—the Department for Education.

I want to talk about three key issues: the importance of getting early intervention right, foster carers, and care leavers themselves. The Government have committed to early intervention and help. In Southampton, I saw the power of shifting from reactive services to preventive services, with early help and intervention. That can reduce the number of children entering care, the amount of time they spend in care, and the damaging impact that being in care for too long can have. For many, it turns them around. Unfortunately, the damage can be compounded by the experience of care, so there is a great need for support. I think I am preaching to the choir when I say that early intervention is absolutely key.

The Government’s response points to the existing grants and the local government finance settlement, which deals with some early interventions, particularly around things such as housing support. Will the Minister please say a bit more about the conversations he is having with MHCLG ministerial colleagues? Will he ensure we seize the opportunity to make a difference? When council funding is announced later in the year, it will be welcomed not only by cabinet members like I was, leaders in this area and people who work in it, but most importantly by young people themselves, who will see that we are taking this issue seriously.

On the recruitment and retention of foster carers, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood made a powerful case setting out why what we are doing is not working. We need to do more. I believe that a national fostering strategy is needed to bring together the good will and the good practice. We know that there are pockets of excellence across the country, and there moments when a particular campaign works well. In Southampton, we were delighted to have one of our former Saints players engage with us on this issue—we could at least win at something, even if it was not football in that season. That joint working to promote the benefits not just to children, but to families who welcome young people into their homes for however long is needed, was a real success. None the less, recruitment numbers go up and down, and I am sure that is replicated across the country.

I hope the Minister will take on board the need to consider again a national fostering strategy that is properly resourced and brings together the comprehensive measures needed for progress. That would help to bring clarity and far greater awareness of the current crisis, and crucially, it would bring hope. As I believe the Minister said the other day, we want there to be choice. We cannot simply say, “Well, we have a foster carer, but they happen to be 20 or 30 miles away and that is the best fit we can get for an individual.” I think we know that we can and should be doing better than that.

On care leavers, our report concluded that it is rightly absolutely unacceptable that young people are left to support themselves financially when they turn 18, particularly if they are in full-time education and have to face either reducing time spent in education or dropping out completely to support themselves. I do not know if anyone has read the book by Ashley John-Baptise about the decision he faced almost 20 years ago either to accept a property that a council had finally been able to offer him as a care leaver, or to take up his place at university. That is not a position we want anyone to be in. Thankfully, the intervention of an MP at that point made a difference. The system should be making the difference, not forcing young people to choose between opportunities that, in most cases, those who are not care-experienced would not even have to consider.

There are things that no responsible parent would allow, and the state—councils—are in loco parentis. Therefore, as this Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity, we must keep the most life-changing opportunity, education, open to all care-experienced young people. Where finance is the barrier, we need to remove that, and where the risk of a placement breakdown is a barrier, we must get extra support for stability. As has been recommended, we need to look at extending corporate parenting to all public bodies that are required to support our children in care. A national care leaver offer, as in recommendation 75, should still be on the table; it would go hand in hand with the local care leaver offer that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is bringing in.

As argued strongly by my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank), designating care experience a protected characteristic is another tool in our box that we could use to make a difference for children and young people. That is recommendation 78, and I would be grateful if the Minister elaborated on what the Government are doing there. Work is ongoing in Parliament, and the hon. Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law), Baroness Longfield and activists such as Terry Galloway and Chris Wild are working on it. We would be pleased to meet with the Minister on an ongoing basis to ensure that we are working towards it.

Finally, I will list a few of the things that Atlas, Mac, Ethan and George told us when they visited this week about what would make a difference to their experience of being in social care, and in particular leaving social care. They are asking for more funding and focus on mental health and wellbeing. That is in recommendation 49. We know that child and adolescent mental health services are in a poor state, whether someone has been in care or not, and urgently need to be fixed. The Government said in their response that they will take a multidisciplinary approach and that they will review statutory guidance. Can the Minister say when we can expect that? The crisis is ongoing. We cannot continue to wait much longer.

Children want more placements closer to home. They want that stability. They want more affordable housing. As has already been outlined, that speaks to the wider challenges in society that the Government have to tackle: child poverty, relieving financial pressures on families, and having better support for parents, which we know will be given through the new Best Start family hubs.

I am glad that parental pay and parental leave are under review so that in the earliest, most crucial days we might see stronger bonds in children. For some, that may remove the likelihood that they have to go into care. There are risks outside the home that we need to fix, and there are risks in the home such as social media and smartphones. Many things impact the stability of our young people’s experience, particularly when they go on to leave care. We need training and experience for the young people themselves, but young people told us that they also want their social workers to be as well trained as possible. Some of them want someone, as they put it, a bit older. They probably mean someone with the deep experience to be able to coach them through the upheaval that many of them face, particularly as they become independent. They want to feel like they are part of a normal family, as much as possible.

I again commend the Chair of the Education Committee for leading this inquiry. It was the first priority of the new Committee. I ask the Minister to make it clear to us and, more importantly, to foster families, to children who are care-experienced, and to those who are leaving care that it is the first priority of this Government. I welcome the many responses that have reassured us of that commitment to make change happen where it is desperately needed, but the Government must not allow this to be a wait and see moment. The Minister must assure us that decisive action will be taken on those recommendations because, as the Chair of the Committee has said, he will be able to count on the Committee’s full support if he does.