Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness with which local authorities are discharging their statutory duties to children.

Ofsted inspects local authority services for children in need of help and protection, children in care, and care leavers. These inspections focus on the effectiveness of local authority services, arrangements in discharging their statutory duties and the quality of leadership and management.

The department uses this inspection data and a range of other measures to assess the overall health of the system and the performance of individual local authorities. Current inspection data suggests that significant improvements are needed before the sector is working at a good level, though there has been some good recent progress.

‘Putting Children First’, published in 2016 sets out a clear approach to issues identified in the delivery of children’s social care services across the country and we continue to deliver the measures proposed in it.

For individual local authorities, in particular those whose performance is deemed ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement to be good’, the department works with the local government sector to drive improvements. We work with 15 ‘Partner in Practice’ local authorities to develop excellence in children’s social care services and to build capacity to support weaker councils to improve.