Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Debate between Will Forster and Josh MacAlister

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

Blackpool faces some real challenges, and I thank all the practitioners on the ground and the council for contending a situation where they have some of the highest rates of children in care. Blackpool is also a destination for distance placements, because of property prices. It means that many children who are in care are sent to Blackpool, which adds additional pressures. I was lucky enough earlier this week to meet Poppie, Hannah, Mackenzie and Tia. Those young people have benefited from one of the Family Finding programmes that this Government have funded called Lifelong Links. It demonstrates what should be the core purpose of the system, rather than a pilot programme or an innovation sitting on the edge of the system. I point to the type of practice done by Lifelong Links, supported by the Family Rights Group, and others, as the core work that we should see the care and leaving care systems doing. It would mean, for want of a better phrase, a “Who Do You Think You Are?”-style process, as seen on TV. This process looks back through the whole history of that child’s experience with important adults, and then gets those people back into the young person’s life.

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

The Centre for Social Justice found that up to 57% of care leavers struggle to stay out of debt and struggle to manage their money. That is why I have got my two local authorities, Surrey county council and Woking borough council, to take young care leavers out of the council tax system altogether to help ensure that they can successfully transition to independent adulthood. Will the Minister agree to work with his colleagues in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that local authorities have the funding and guidance to extend that support across the country?

[Josh MacAlister]

I welcome it when councils create local offers, which includes the example that my hon. Friend mentions of council tax exemptions or discounts. It can also include support with public transport and making bus travel free. I welcome all of that. What we are saying with this new strategy is that although all of that is important, it is second order to the bigger issue that drives a lot of that vulnerability of debt, homelessness, tragically early deaths and completed suicides from young care-experienced adults, which is that sense that they do not have people in their life who love them. I am convinced that if we can get that bit right and make that the focus above all else, everything else will become easier, and the outcomes for this important community will get better.