Offences against Children: Children in Care

(asked on 22nd February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what work streams there are in her Department and the Department of Education to coordinate both Departments' response to tackling grooming in care homes.


Answered by
Victoria Atkins Portrait
Victoria Atkins
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This question was answered on 25th February 2021

The Home Office is working closely with colleagues across government, including with the Department for Education, to ensure children in care homes are kept safe from grooming and exploitation.

The Government wants to make sure that all homes are providing high quality care that meets each child’s individual needs, keeps them safe and enables them to fulfil their full potential. Ofsted inspects all children’s homes at least once per year and at present, 80% of homes are rated good or outstanding. In April 2015, DfE introduced the Children’s Homes Regulations (England) which included Quality Standards for children’s homes, specifying the outcomes that children must be supported to achieve while living in children’s homes.

We are currently supporting the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, which is taking a fundamental look at what is needed to make a real difference to the needs, experiences and outcomes of the children supported by children’s social care, including those in children’s homes.

Through our county lines programme the Home Office has provided up to £860,000 to provide specialist one-to-one support in London, the West Midlands and Merseyside to under 25’s and their families who are criminally exploited through county lines. Through this investment we are also delivering awareness sessions to care home staff to increase their understanding of criminally exploited children and young people.

We have also funded the Prevention Programme to deliver targeted virtual training sessions focussing on child sexual abuse and exploitation to children’s homes in the North East and North West and have worked alongside the British Transport Police to provide intelligence-led interventions to children’s homes to ensure appropriate safeguarding actions are taken in response.

The Department for Education is also funding the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme to help safeguarding partners in local areas develop a strategic response to child exploitation and risk of harm from outside the family home, in particular child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation, including county lines drug trafficking and modern slavery.

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