Children in Public Care: Unregistered Accommodation

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is entirely right that looked-after children are some of the most vulnerable in our society. I mentioned in my Answer to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, some of the things we are doing, but there are also a number of other initiatives under way: we are providing £5 million from the £200 million children’s social care innovation programme to develop new approaches for care placements and making seed funding available for seven partnerships to test new approaches for sufficiency planning and commissioning in foster care.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is quite clear that, despite the Minister saying that he did not like young people being unsupported when going into care, it is happening. It is quite clear that the Government will need a cross-departmental approach to deal with this. Can the Minister give us some idea of how this approach has been structured across the Home Office and the Department for Education and when we can expect this practice to be removed?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct that this will need a great deal of inter- departmental co-operation and discussion. It involves departments such as the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government as well as the Department for Education. We are all working closely on a number of initiatives to try to improve the situation, as I outlined in my previous answer to the noble Baroness.