Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure the quality of social work services provided to local authorities by outsourced bodies.

Local authorities are responsible for ensuring the quality of all their children’s social care functions, and remain accountable for the quality of all such provision should they choose to delegate such functions to a third party provider. Ofsted inspect all local authority provision, including any providers to which functions are delegated. The Secretary of State for Education can, and does, intervene using her discretionary powers under the Education Act 1996 (as applied by section 50 of the Children Act 2004), should any such provision fall below expected standards.