Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the reasons for the recent increases in the number of children (a) known to social services and (b) taken into care.

The government wants every child to be in the stable, loving home that is right for them. One of the key principles of the legislation which underpins the UK’s child protection system is that children are best looked after within their families, but that is not always possible. As a last resort, after other steps have failed, local authorities may apply to the independent courts for a decision about removing a child from his or her family – for the child’s safety. We regularly monitor and assess the number of children coming into contact with our child protection system, including through our statistics on ‘Children in need and child protection’ at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-children-in-need and our statistics on ‘Looked-after children’ at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-looked-after-children.