Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department takes to ensure that third party organisations delegated to undertake children's social care functions of local authorities are of an appropriate standard.

The Government's recent consultation seeks to enable local authorities to delegate children's social care functions to broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The proposals do not remove responsibilities from local authorities for ensuring their statutory obligations on child protection and children's social care are met, and it remains local authorities' responsibility to ensure the quality of that provision.

Delegated social care function arrangements will continue to be inspected by Ofsted, in the same way as directly delivered local authority social care functions, as part of its local authority inspection framework. In addition, regulations currently govern the fitness of third party providers and require their registration with Ofsted.