Edward Timpson

As part of Project Gigabit, in July 2023 we launched a procurement to invite suppliers to bid for a contract to bring gigabit-capable broadband to premises in Cheshire that are unlikely to be reached by broadband suppliers' commercial rollout plans. We aim to award a contract to the successful supplier by the end of March 2024.

The government’s £200m Rural Gigabit Connectivity programme is already supporting rollout of gigabit broadband in rural areas.

The government has also pledged £5bn of funding for Gigabit broadband in the ‘hardest to reach’, predominantly rural, areas of the UK.

The government announced in-principle support in October 2019 for the Mobile Network Operators’ Shared Rural Network proposal. It aims to collectively increase 4G mobile coverage throughout the United Kingdom to 95% by 2025.

The department welcomes Coram’s ‘Charter for Children’, and is grateful for Coram’s work supporting children, young people and families. The government is committed to prioritising the needs of children, ensuring that their best interests are at the centre of policy and decision making. Responsibility for the recommendations covers several government departments. The department will consider the Charter’s recommendations as part of the up-coming Spending Review.

The Children’s Social Care National Framework (National Framework), along with proposed Children’s Social Care Dashboard (Dashboard) indicators, were published for consultation at the same time as the government’s strategy for children’s social care, ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, in February 2023. The National Framework describes the outcomes that children’s social care should achieve when supporting children, young people and families. The Dashboard will serve as a learning tool for local and central government. It will have a national set of indicators, to help understand progress towards the children’s social care outcomes, and to support learning and improvement at a local, regional, and national level.

The consultation took place over 14 weeks and gathered a range of views from the online consultation and over 30 engagement events that involved around 500 people from local authorities, education, health, and police, as well as members of the public. The government response to the consultation was published in September 2023 and committed to iterating the National Framework, giving more prominence to the important role of practice supervisors, as well as adding a new chapter on how multi-agency working enables good outcomes.

The National Framework will be issued as statutory guidance by the end of the year. Local authorities will have a one-year implementation period, and government has committed to provide advice to local authorities on embedding the National Framework. A phased roll-out of the Dashboard will begin in 2024 so that the department can test, evaluate and iterate the Dashboard.

The department is continuing to develop the indicators chosen to measure the outcomes and enablers identified in the National Framework.

The Children’s Social Care National Framework and Dashboard consultation response included a long list of indicators that are continuing to be tested, to measure feasibility and reliability for use, including placement measures.

The response is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1185764/Children_s_social_care_national_framework_and_dashboard_consultation_response.pdf.

The department anticipates publishing an update on the target scope for the first version of the dashboard in the near future.

Ensuring the adoption system is effective is a top priority for this government, and I am determined to tackle the bureaucracy and inefficiencies that can prevent children who need a stable, loving forever home from finding one quickly.

I want to make sure that enough adopters are recruited for the children who need them, that they are matched swiftly to children and that they are properly supported as they form their new family.

In 2015, we had 180 different adoption agencies, a system which resulted in inefficiencies and delays for children. Our programme to introduce fewer, more efficient regional adoption agencies (RAAs) has now created 28 RAAs and they are starting to drive change.

For example, the first annual RAA evaluation report identified improvements in recruitment, matching and support. The latest evaluation of the RAA programme shows a 14-day reduction time for children waiting for placement. We have also seen a 35-day reduction for placement for our ‘harder to place’ children.

This year we have invested £1 million into adopter recruitment. RAA leaders, working with voluntary adoption agencies and others in the adoption sector, launched the #YouCanAdopt Campaign in September. The campaign aims to dispel myths and encourage more people from all walks of life to come forward to adopt. You do not need to be married or own your home to be a loving, adoptive parent. Agencies are reporting a large increase in enquiries, including from people from black, asian and minority ethnic communities. I would encourage anyone to look into the YouCanAdopt campaign.

The government has invested significantly in the Adoption Support Fund (ASF), which has provided more than £177 million for therapeutic support to over 62,000 families since it launched in 2015. The support provided to families through the ASF means that families have managed to access more timely therapeutic support for their children/family. Through our ASF COVID-19 scheme, launched in April, we provided £6.5 million to support up to 61,000 adoptive and special guardianship families struggling to cope with the challenges arising from the COVID-19 outbreak.

The School Sport and Activity Action Plan set out a range of measures to ensure that all children have access to high quality PE and sport sessions during the school week and opportunities to be physically active throughout the school day, to help them do the 60 minutes a day of physical exercise recommended by the Chief Medical Officer.

The Government remains committed to supporting schools to make good use of their sports facilities and to promote physical literacy and competitive sport. We plan to update the School Sport Activity Action Plan with longer-term proposals to support schools to work with sports clubs, coaches and others to ensure children’s activity levels continue to rise when they return to school.

The Government has already provided £2.4 million in funding to support this activity and has worked with Active Partnerships, helping schools, clubs and others to adapt plans to provide activity while schools have been closed.

Active Partnerships have been working with national and local partners to identify how best to support the sport and physical activity sector during the coronavirus outbreak. The Department has also published online educational resources approved by subject experts for schools and parents to help children to learn at home, including resources for PE.

As schools open more widely, we recognise the importance of children returning to taking part in physical activity and PE as part of the curriculum, with well-established links between physical activity, improved mental wellbeing and educational attainment. The Department’s guidance includes details on the teaching of subject areas including PE and ensuring children have opportunities to increase their physical activity throughout the school day.