Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Debate between Munira Wilson and Josh MacAlister

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I have no doubt that it is a moment of immense pride for the Minister to be able to announce as Government policy many things that he recommended in his own independent review, and we welcome them.

Every child deserves to have deep, trusting, lifelong relationships, yet, as we have heard, too many children in care are torn away from those whom they are able to trust, unable to keep in touch with them for the stability they need to enter adulthood. We know from the Milburn report, published last week, that care-experienced children are five times more likely not to be in education, employment or training at the age of 17 than the general population. As Milburn says, the care system produces an intense concentration of changes

“at precisely the ages when continuity matters most.”

The Liberal Democrats therefore welcome today’s announcement—the strategy, the accompanying investment, and the marked shift away from harmful short-term thinking and a transactional system towards a holistic approach that puts the child front and centre of decision making, alongside long-term relationships. The Minister will know that my noble Friend in the other place, Baroness Tyler, campaigned hard to close the loophole that prevented children in care from being able to contact siblings not in care, and we hope that today’s announcement will build on her brilliant campaigning.

As the Minister alluded to, the number of children in care living more than 20 miles away from home has increased by 41% over the past decade, and that has a damaging long-term impact on those children’s relationships. When will we see a reduction in the number of children in care living far from their families and friends? What are the current accountability measures when children are moved to the other side of the country although that is not in their best interests, and how can that accountability be improved through the regional care co-operatives?

The Minister also referenced the new financial allowance pilot for kinship carers. He knows that my party and I have long campaigned on that issue, and I very much hope that he will move at pace, working with the Treasury, to scale those pilots up quickly nationwide. He knows how beneficial it is to put kinship carers’ allowances on a par with foster carers’ allowances. I also urge him to work with Ministers in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that statutory leave for kinship carers is part of the parental leave review.

Finally, the adoption and special guardianship support fund has been mentioned. I note that the Minister has increased the fund overall, but the cuts to the individual grants persist. He knows that those cuts are damaging to the families affected, so will he please consider reinstating those grants?

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank the hon. Member for her questions and, again, for the spirit in which she has made her contribution. I also thank her for her leadership on this issue—she has spent a lot of time in this place raising many of these points time and again. She is right to highlight the work of the noble Baroness Tyler in the other place, and I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) in this place; both of them, working cross party, have long highlighted the importance of brothers and sisters in the care system. The most important relationships can often be relationships with siblings.

I want the number of distant placements to start to come down in this Parliament. The leading indicator of that would be an expansion of fostering, and we are monitoring that at the moment. We need to start seeing those numbers go up in a big way so that the homes are created close to where children already live, and there is not a need for distant placements.

Turning to accountability, we definitely need greater visibility on those numbers in the system; if the metric I talked about in the statement is embedded across the system as well, we will start to see the strength of those relationships. We speak to young people who have been moved two hours away from their home community; earlier this week, I spoke to a young woman who that had happened to. It was impossible for her to keep the quality of relationship that she wanted to with her father, which was safe. We need to measure that. That needs to be the central focus, and then everything else will flow from it, including the location of placements.

Finally, on kinship allowance, the take-up has been impressive already; it is only a few weeks into the roll-out, and I have looked at the data. I look forward to going to Grimsby soon, hopefully, with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) to see one of the areas that, at the moment, is more successful than the others—there is a competition under way—and see the success of that programme.