Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department has allocated to the PAUSE scheme in each of the last 10 years.

The Pause scheme received £4.2 million in round one of the department’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme (2014-2016) to pilot the programme in 7 sites.

The Pause scheme was then funded a further £6.8 million in round two of the programme (2017-2020) to scale and spread the Pause model to 9 new local authority areas, including to develop and implement a care leaver pilot for young women (aged 16-25) who have been in care and who have experienced one or more children being removed.

In 2020-21, Pause was funded £3.6 million by the department to test a regional approach to the scheme in the North West and North East regions and to implement a single Pause practice in 6 individual local authorities.