Asked by: Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrat - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of families that have experienced adoption breakdown in the last 12 months.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department does not collect information centrally on families that have experienced adoptions that break down.
The department publishes information on whether children starting to be looked after in any given year were known to have been previously adopted. The latest information available relates to the year ending 31 March 2024 and is in the table ‘CLA starting during the year by characteristics – National’ of the ‘Children looked after in England’ statistical release which can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/92f77d0d-7e95-45a1-f1db-08dd5cc661f7. This includes information on any known previous permanence arrangement for a child starting to be looked after.
Information for the year ending 31 March 2025 will be published in autumn 2025.
Asked by: Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrat - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle adoption breakdown.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department has provided funding of £9 million in this financial year to Adoption England to improve adoption services in Regional Adoption Agencies (RAAs).
This includes £3 million of funding to develop more Centres of Excellence as multidisciplinary teams across the country to provide specialist and therapeutic support to families and the development of national standards for adoption support. It also includes a new framework for an early support core offer, ‘Becoming a Family’, for the first twelve to eighteen months of placement and an Adoption Support Plan to guide assessments of a family’s support needs. All are designed to improve support and reduce the risk of an adoption breakdown.
Adoption England are also planning work to develop a national protocol on how children’s services, front door services and adoption support teams work together to better support families at risk of adoption disruption.
Adoption England and RAAs work closely with adopters on all of their projects to improve adoption support services. This includes considering the latest evidence of why adoption disruptions have occurred in their agencies and across the country.
Since its inception in 2015, the department has provided over £400 million through the adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) to provide therapeutic interventions for around 52,700 children who have left care under an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangements order. The interventions are designed to help children and their families to deal with their trauma and attachment difficulties and have been independently assessed to have helped prevent adoption breakdowns. ASGSF funding for the next financial year is currently subject to business planning discussions and an announcement will be made shortly.
Asked by: Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrat - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the number of foster care placements that were unsuccessful in (a) England and (b) Wales in the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As part of my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Transformation Fund announced in the Spring Statement and building on the £15 million investment in the Autumn Budget 2024, the department will provide an additional £25 million over two years, beginning in the 2026/27 and 2027/28 financial years, for foster care as part of Children’s Social Care Reform. We expect this funding to help recruit an additional 400 fostering families, provide better peer to peer support for foster carers, and ensure more children in care have stability through ensuring a foster care placement is available to them when needed.
Currently, there are ten fostering regional programmes active across England, collaborating with 64% of all local authorities to recruit, retain and support foster carers. The department plans to move towards full national roll-out in the next financial year. This supports retention and support for carers through the recruitment of short break foster carers, who provide high quality care for children while their usual foster carers take a break.
This programme also includes an expansion of ‘The Mockingbird Family Model’, an innovative evidence-based approach involving six to ten families grouped into a constellation around a hub home carer. Mockingbird includes peer support, respite and training. It was found to substantially improve retention by an independent evaluation, which showed that participating households were 82% less likely to deregister than households who did not participate.
The department also funds Fosterline, a free independent source of advice and support to current and prospective carers.
To improve retention, the department is also acting on areas that matter to foster carers. The allegations process is a key contributor to high levels of foster carer deregistration, and the department is committed to improving practice and guidance in this area. The department has also begun conversations with the sector about proposed changes to delegated authority, ensuring that all foster carers have delegated authority by default in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care.
Financial support plays a role in retaining and supporting foster carers. The National Minimum Allowance (NMA) was introduced by the Labour government in 2007 and has kept pace with inflation over time. Current levels of the NMA have been uplifted by 3.55% for the 2025/2026 financial year and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/support-for-foster-parents/help-with-the-cost-of-fostering.
Finally, we encourage fostering services to adopt the Fostering Network’s ‘Foster Carer Charter’, which sets out clear principles of what support should be available to foster carers.
Regarding ‘unsuccessful’ placements, the department publishes statistics for children looked after in England only, not Wales. Statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.
The department does not collect information on whether placements for children looked after were successful or not. These placements can end for a wide range of reasons and there is no specific category recorded as an ‘unsuccessful placement’.
The latest information on the main reason for placement changes during the 2023/24 reporting year is published in the ‘Children looked after in England’ statistical release at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c3ae926d-83e8-4ec9-3213-08dd6b9d125f.
Asked by: Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrat - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that local authorities provide sufficient support for foster carers.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As part of my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Transformation Fund announced in the Spring Statement and building on the £15 million investment in the Autumn Budget 2024, the department will provide an additional £25 million over two years, beginning in the 2026/27 and 2027/28 financial years, for foster care as part of Children’s Social Care Reform. We expect this funding to help recruit an additional 400 fostering families, provide better peer to peer support for foster carers, and ensure more children in care have stability through ensuring a foster care placement is available to them when needed.
Currently, there are ten fostering regional programmes active across England, collaborating with 64% of all local authorities to recruit, retain and support foster carers. The department plans to move towards full national roll-out in the next financial year. This supports retention and support for carers through the recruitment of short break foster carers, who provide high quality care for children while their usual foster carers take a break.
This programme also includes an expansion of ‘The Mockingbird Family Model’, an innovative evidence-based approach involving six to ten families grouped into a constellation around a hub home carer. Mockingbird includes peer support, respite and training. It was found to substantially improve retention by an independent evaluation, which showed that participating households were 82% less likely to deregister than households who did not participate.
The department also funds Fosterline, a free independent source of advice and support to current and prospective carers.
To improve retention, the department is also acting on areas that matter to foster carers. The allegations process is a key contributor to high levels of foster carer deregistration, and the department is committed to improving practice and guidance in this area. The department has also begun conversations with the sector about proposed changes to delegated authority, ensuring that all foster carers have delegated authority by default in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care.
Financial support plays a role in retaining and supporting foster carers. The National Minimum Allowance (NMA) was introduced by the Labour government in 2007 and has kept pace with inflation over time. Current levels of the NMA have been uplifted by 3.55% for the 2025/2026 financial year and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/support-for-foster-parents/help-with-the-cost-of-fostering.
Finally, we encourage fostering services to adopt the Fostering Network’s ‘Foster Carer Charter’, which sets out clear principles of what support should be available to foster carers.
Regarding ‘unsuccessful’ placements, the department publishes statistics for children looked after in England only, not Wales. Statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.
The department does not collect information on whether placements for children looked after were successful or not. These placements can end for a wide range of reasons and there is no specific category recorded as an ‘unsuccessful placement’.
The latest information on the main reason for placement changes during the 2023/24 reporting year is published in the ‘Children looked after in England’ statistical release at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c3ae926d-83e8-4ec9-3213-08dd6b9d125f.
Asked by: Tom Gordon (Liberal Democrat - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help retain foster carers.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
As part of my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Transformation Fund announced in the Spring Statement and building on the £15 million investment in the Autumn Budget 2024, the department will provide an additional £25 million over two years, beginning in the 2026/27 and 2027/28 financial years, for foster care as part of Children’s Social Care Reform. We expect this funding to help recruit an additional 400 fostering families, provide better peer to peer support for foster carers, and ensure more children in care have stability through ensuring a foster care placement is available to them when needed.
Currently, there are ten fostering regional programmes active across England, collaborating with 64% of all local authorities to recruit, retain and support foster carers. The department plans to move towards full national roll-out in the next financial year. This supports retention and support for carers through the recruitment of short break foster carers, who provide high quality care for children while their usual foster carers take a break.
This programme also includes an expansion of ‘The Mockingbird Family Model’, an innovative evidence-based approach involving six to ten families grouped into a constellation around a hub home carer. Mockingbird includes peer support, respite and training. It was found to substantially improve retention by an independent evaluation, which showed that participating households were 82% less likely to deregister than households who did not participate.
The department also funds Fosterline, a free independent source of advice and support to current and prospective carers.
To improve retention, the department is also acting on areas that matter to foster carers. The allegations process is a key contributor to high levels of foster carer deregistration, and the department is committed to improving practice and guidance in this area. The department has also begun conversations with the sector about proposed changes to delegated authority, ensuring that all foster carers have delegated authority by default in relation to day-to-day parenting of the child in their care.
Financial support plays a role in retaining and supporting foster carers. The National Minimum Allowance (NMA) was introduced by the Labour government in 2007 and has kept pace with inflation over time. Current levels of the NMA have been uplifted by 3.55% for the 2025/2026 financial year and can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/support-for-foster-parents/help-with-the-cost-of-fostering.
Finally, we encourage fostering services to adopt the Fostering Network’s ‘Foster Carer Charter’, which sets out clear principles of what support should be available to foster carers.
Regarding ‘unsuccessful’ placements, the department publishes statistics for children looked after in England only, not Wales. Statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.
The department does not collect information on whether placements for children looked after were successful or not. These placements can end for a wide range of reasons and there is no specific category recorded as an ‘unsuccessful placement’.
The latest information on the main reason for placement changes during the 2023/24 reporting year is published in the ‘Children looked after in England’ statistical release at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/c3ae926d-83e8-4ec9-3213-08dd6b9d125f.