Jo Platt

We are committed to delivering better life chances for all - breaking the link between background and success. At the Budget, the Chancellor announced increases to both the National Minimum Wage (16.3% for those aged 18-20) and the National Living Wage (6.7% for those 21 and over), as well as a £240 million Get Britain Working package to improve support for people who are economically inactive, unemployed or want to develop their careers. Through our Mission-driven Government, we will build the skills people need for opportunity and growth.

This Government will also, at last, commence the socio-economic duty in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010. The duty will require public bodies, when making strategic decisions, to actively consider how their decisions might help to reduce the inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage. We will be updating Parliament on this in due course.

We are committed to delivering better life chances for all - breaking the link between background and success. At the Budget, the Chancellor announced increases to both the National Minimum Wage (16.3% for those aged 18-20) and the National Living Wage (6.7% for those 21 and over), as well as a £240 million Get Britain Working package to improve support for people who are economically inactive, unemployed or want to develop their careers. Through our Mission-driven Government, we will build the skills people need for opportunity and growth.

This Government will also, at last, commence the socio-economic duty in section 1 of the Equality Act 2010. The duty will require public bodies, when making strategic decisions, to actively consider how their decisions might help to reduce the inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage. We will be updating Parliament on this in due course.

The government is focused on implementing the Online Safety Act as quickly as possible, so children benefit from its wide-ranging protections. The Act will ensure that companies take steps to protect their child users from harm on their platforms, including protecting children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Ofcom has consulted on its draft codes of practice for protecting children which set out the steps companies must take to protect children on their platforms under the Online Safety Act. We expect the child safety codes will be finalised and in effect by summer 2025.

The government has a central mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost life chances for every child. The within-school and college factor that makes the biggest difference to a young person’s education is high-quality teaching, but this government inherited years of rising teacher vacancies and low recruitment resulting in shortages of qualified teachers across the country. This is why this government is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and our colleges over the course of this parliament.

This government has already made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession. We have accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools, which is effective from September. The department has expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’ and the further education teacher recruitment campaign ‘Share your Skills’. The government has also reformed the school inspection system to remove Ofsted’s single headline grades.

This government has recently announced the Initial Teacher Training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle, which is worth up to £233 million, a £37 million increase on the last cycle. This includes a range of measures, including bursaries worth £29,000 tax-free and scholarships worth £31,000 tax-free, to encourage talented trainees into key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing.

This government wants to support retention alongside recruitment so that teachers stay and thrive in the profession. As of 14 October, eligible early career teachers in priority science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and technical subjects can claim targeted retention incentive payments worth up to £6,000 after tax, with payments made available to college teachers in key STEM and technical subjects for the first time.

In addition, the department is supporting teachers to improve their workload and wellbeing and have a made a range of resources available to support teachers including the ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service and the ‘education staff wellbeing charter’. The department is also working with schools to increase opportunities for greater flexible working, for example we have clarified that teachers can undertake their planning, preparation and assessment time remotely.

The department recognises the important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children and the role of local authorities to support them.

The government has recently announced a £40 million package to trial a new kinship allowance in up to ten local authorities to test whether paying an allowance to cover certain costs, such as covering day to day costs, supporting them to settle into a new home with relatives, or affording activities to support their wellbeing, can help increase the number of children taken in by family members and friends. This trial will help us make decisions about future national rollout.

The government recently published the updated guidance for local authorities, the kinship care statutory guidance. This guidance outlines the framework for the provision of support for kinship children and kinship families.

The government also appointed the first National Kinship Ambassador who will work alongside local authorities to help improve their kinship practice and local policies, and ensure they are following national guidance. As well as providing bespoke support to some local authority teams, they will share learning nationally so that more local authorities can benefit from evidence of best practice. In turn, this will help to improve outcomes for children and families.

For too long the education and care system has not met the needs of all children, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), with parents struggling to get their children the support they need and deserve. This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The department wants to drive a consistent and inclusive approach to supporting children and young people with SEND through early identification, effective support, high quality teaching and effective allocation of resources, regardless of whether they have a diagnosis. The department is strengthening the evidence base of what works to improve inclusive practice in mainstream settings and have recently commissioned evidence reviews from Newcastle University and University College London on this point.

In November 2023, the department announced the Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme. PINS brings together Integrated Care Boards, local authorities and schools, working in partnership with parents and carers, to support schools to better meet the needs of neurodiverse children and their families and enable an inclusive school environment. PINS deploys specialists from both health and education workforces into 10% of mainstream primary school settings (around 1680 schools). PINS will build teacher and staff capacity to identify and meet the needs of neurodiverse children, including those with speech and language needs, through whole-school interventions. The programme is being evaluated and the learning will inform future policy development around how schools support neurodiverse children.

The department also holds and funds the Universal SEND Services contract, which brings together SEND-specific continued professional development and offers support for the school and further education workforce. The programme aims to improve outcomes for children and young people, including those with autism. As part of the contract, the Autism Education Trust (AET) provides a range of training and support for staff on autism. Since the contract began in May 2022, over 185,000 professionals have received training from AET training partners.

The Child Maintenance Service is committed to delivering the best possible service to all customers within our growing caseload. We continuously monitor telephony performance and through this we fully recognise that call waiting times are, at times, longer than we would like. To address this, we are working to improve the efficiency of our customer interactions through both telephone and digital channels.

In September, we introduced the Digital Assist Telephony Service, which has been a significant step forward in our mission to support and encourage customers to use our online services. In October, we restructured our call routing to make more caseworkers available to answer telephone calls. By promoting self-service options online and efficient call routing, we have freed up valuable resources to deliver a more responsive service and allow caseworkers more time to better assist customers who need to reach out to us via telephone.

Additionally, we have extended the hours of the telephony service to 6pm on weekdays in order to meet demand, and our online services are available to all customers 24/7. This has been extremely successful with just over 1 million customers logging on to their online My Child Maintenance Case account in November. As a result, we have seen a reduction in call volumes, as well as improved customer service delivery through the combination of telephone and digital channels.

We will continue to review, evaluate, and enhance our telephony service to meet demand and deliver a quality customer service.

No assessment has been made on the adequacy of the implementation of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance NG206 on myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). NICE guidelines are not mandatory, but the Government does expect healthcare commissioners to take the guidelines fully into account in designing services to meet the needs of their local population, and to work towards their implementation over time.

There are steps that the Government is taking to improve care for patients with ME/CFS. It is a priority for the Department to publish the final ME/CFS delivery plan. We cannot comment on the exact content of the final delivery plan at this time, but it will be shaped by the consultation responses, along with continued close engagement with stakeholders, with three broad themes of attitudes and education, research, and living with ME/CFS. We aim to publish it at the end of March 2025.

The Department is also currently working with NHS England to develop an e-learning course on ME/CFS for healthcare professionals, with the aim of supporting staff to be able to provide better care and improve patient outcomes.

Additionally, the Government funds research into ME/CFS through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), through UK Research and Innovation. In 2020, the NIHR and the MRC came together to fund the world’s largest genome-wide association study of ME/CFS. This £3.2 million study, termed DecodeME, will analyse samples from 25,000 people with ME/CFS to search for genetic differences that may indicate underlying causes or an increased risk of developing the condition. Further details of the study are available at the following link:

www.decodeme.org.uk

No assessment has been made on the adequacy of the implementation of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance NG206 on myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). NICE guidelines are not mandatory, but the Government does expect healthcare commissioners to take the guidelines fully into account in designing services to meet the needs of their local population, and to work towards their implementation over time.

There are steps that the Government is taking to improve care for patients with ME/CFS. It is a priority for the Department to publish the final ME/CFS delivery plan. We cannot comment on the exact content of the final delivery plan at this time, but it will be shaped by the consultation responses, along with continued close engagement with stakeholders, with three broad themes of attitudes and education, research, and living with ME/CFS. We aim to publish it at the end of March 2025.

The Department is also currently working with NHS England to develop an e-learning course on ME/CFS for healthcare professionals, with the aim of supporting staff to be able to provide better care and improve patient outcomes.

Additionally, the Government funds research into ME/CFS through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Medical Research Council (MRC), through UK Research and Innovation. In 2020, the NIHR and the MRC came together to fund the world’s largest genome-wide association study of ME/CFS. This £3.2 million study, termed DecodeME, will analyse samples from 25,000 people with ME/CFS to search for genetic differences that may indicate underlying causes or an increased risk of developing the condition. Further details of the study are available at the following link:

www.decodeme.org.uk

On 17 July 2024, the King’s Speech set out the Government’s commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act. Department officials are now working to prepare the Mental Health Bill for introduction when parliamentary time allows.

As part of the Department’s preparations, plans are underway for stakeholder engagement once the bill is introduced. This will involve engaging with autism charities, including the National Autistic Society, on a range of related issues.

NHS England published updated policy and guidance on Dynamic Support Registers (DSRs) and Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews (C(E)TRs) on 25 January 2023, for implementation from 1 May 2023. The purpose of the updated policy and guidance is to help ensure that people with a learning disability and autistic people get the right support in their communities, and to prevent hospital admission.

NHS England produced the updated policy and guidance following a process of reviewing the learning since the inception of DSRs and C(E)TRs, including consultation and engagement with people with lived experience. This process included drawing on the findings of the Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board’s review of the deaths of Joanna, Jon, and Ben at Cawston Park in Norfolk and the subsequent safe and wellbeing reviews for all people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals, to ensure they are an effective provision.

The Department is currently considering next steps to improve diagnostic assessment and support for autistic people. It is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including autism assessment and support services, in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance to deliver improved outcomes in all-age autism assessment pathways. This guidance will help ICBs and the National Health Service to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people, and adults referred to an autism assessment service. The guidance also sets out what support should be available before an assessment, and what support should follow a recent diagnosis of autism based on the available evidence. In 2024/25, £4.3 million is available nationally to improve services for autistic children and young people, including autism assessment services.