Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her department is taking to ensure children in foster care receive adequate mental support.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is committed to ensuring children in foster care receive appropriate emotional and mental health support. Regulations require every looked-after child to have their emotional and mental health assessed by a medical practitioner. Local authorities must ensure this happens. Integrated care boards and NHS England must cooperate with requests for services. Joint statutory guidance sets clear expectations that local authorities and health partners should promote wellbeing, act early on signs of difficulty, and ensure assessors have the right skills. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-the-health-and-wellbeing-of-looked-after-children--2.
We are working with the Department of Health and Social Care to strengthen mental health support for care‑experienced children. Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, new corporate parenting responsibilities will be placed on government departments and relevant public bodies, ensuring they consider the needs of looked-after children and care leavers when designing and delivering health services. In December 2025, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and I announced a three year pilot to ensure children in care have access to the support they need sooner. This will build on existing work across the country, bringing social workers and NHS professionals together to provide direct mental health support to children and families when they need it most.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure children in foster care are sufficiently supported in the mainstream education system.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Every local authority in England must appoint a Virtual School Head to promote the educational attainment of the children they look after, including children in foster care, wherever they live or are educated. All schools must also appoint a designated teacher with expertise in the needs of looked-after children. These children attract pupil premium plus funding of £2,630 per child up to the age of 16, managed by the Virtual School Head, to support meeting objectives in each child’s individual Personal Education Plan. We also provide post‑16 funding to help young people progress into further and higher education, training or employment. The full offer for children in care is set out in in the ‘Promoting the education of looked-after and previously looked-after children’ statutory guidance, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-the-education-of-looked-after-children.
Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we are extending the Virtual School Head’s duties to include promoting the educational achievement of all children with a social worker and children in kinship care.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure foster carers receive adequate (a) financial and (b) mental support.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that new foster carers are adequately vetted.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to increase long term retention rates for foster carers.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is taking wide‑ranging action to strengthen foster care and ensure that children receive the support they need to thrive.
We have launched an ambitious fostering reform programme that aims to create 10,000 additional foster placements during this Parliament. These reforms are designed to reverse the long‑term decline in fostering capacity, expand the number of suitable homes, and rebuild the system so children can grow up in loving, local family settings with carers who feel trusted and valued. To achieve this, we are improving regional coordination so local authorities can work more effectively together, and we are re-writing the rule book to prioritise stable, trusted relationships.
Foster carers must be thoroughly assessed before approval. All prospective carers undergo rigorous checks and training, and our updated standards will help services ensure assessments are robust, consistent, and focused on the skills needed to provide high quality care.
To support long‑term retention, our reforms will ensure stronger wraparound support, so foster carers receive the practical and emotional help they need. This includes use of carers’ wider support networks, peer support and training. These measures aim to improve the experience of current carers and to encourage more people to come forward.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure children in the foster care system are able to access suitable foster carers in their local area.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that children can access suitable foster placements close to home. Our fostering reforms will expand national capacity and strengthen regional collaboration, improve recruitment and matching processes, and assist local authorities to maintain stable local options.
In the East Midlands specifically, the Foster for East Midlands regional fostering hub is helping increase recruitment by providing a single, streamlined point of entry for enquiries across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The hub offers clear information, specialist advice and consistent, high quality support to prospective carers, and has already generated strong interest since launch. It also incorporates initiatives such as Mockingbird constellations, which demonstrate the supportive networks available to carers and help increase the appeal of fostering by reducing isolation and enabling a strong community ethos.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her department is taking to increase the number of approved foster carers in Nottinghamshire.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that children can access suitable foster placements close to home. Our fostering reforms will expand national capacity and strengthen regional collaboration, improve recruitment and matching processes, and assist local authorities to maintain stable local options.
In the East Midlands specifically, the Foster for East Midlands regional fostering hub is helping increase recruitment by providing a single, streamlined point of entry for enquiries across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The hub offers clear information, specialist advice and consistent, high quality support to prospective carers, and has already generated strong interest since launch. It also incorporates initiatives such as Mockingbird constellations, which demonstrate the supportive networks available to carers and help increase the appeal of fostering by reducing isolation and enabling a strong community ethos.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help reduce bullying in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
Tackling and preventing bullying in schools is essential to ensuring that schools can provide calm and inclusive learning environments. All schools are legally required to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. They have the freedom to develop their own anti-bullying strategies appropriate to their environment and are held to account by Ofsted.
Where bullying is reported, it is important that schools take prompt action to support the pupil and prevent the bullying from happening again. Ofsted’s renewed Education Inspection Framework, which has been in use from November 2025, evaluates a school’s approach to bullying during school inspections. This is considered through the lens of the attendance and behaviour evaluation area.
To support schools, the department has procured for the development of a bespoke evidence-based toolkit for teachers to guide them through approaches to tackling misbehaviour and bullying, and actions to focus on prevention.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce regional inequalities in the ability to access private tutoring.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper sets out plans to build on support at home with a stretching, enriching and inclusive school experience to ensure every child has what they need to get on in life.
We know that many schools use their pupil premium to fund tuition. Schools can use their pupil premium to provide peer tutoring and one-to-one or small group tuition when choosing support that will most improve progress, using the department’s ‘menu of approaches’, which is informed by evidence of how best to improve disadvantaged pupils’ attainment.
Through our AI Tutoring Tools Programme, we will be co‑creating and trialling curriculum‑aligned, safe‑by‑design AI tutoring tools with teachers, pupils and experts. This will support teaching, build evidence of impact on attainment and inclusion to ensure pupils, including those who often cannot access private tuition, benefit from high quality individual learning support.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure children from disadvantaged backgrounds can access private tutoring.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper sets out plans to build on support at home with a stretching, enriching and inclusive school experience to ensure every child has what they need to get on in life.
We know that many schools use their pupil premium to fund tuition. Schools can use their pupil premium to provide peer tutoring and one-to-one or small group tuition when choosing support that will most improve progress, using the department’s ‘menu of approaches’, which is informed by evidence of how best to improve disadvantaged pupils’ attainment.
Through our AI Tutoring Tools Programme, we will be co‑creating and trialling curriculum‑aligned, safe‑by‑design AI tutoring tools with teachers, pupils and experts. This will support teaching, build evidence of impact on attainment and inclusion to ensure pupils, including those who often cannot access private tuition, benefit from high quality individual learning support.