Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that there is a sustainable future for children’s services in West Lancashire.

Children's social care services in Lancashire were judged as ‘Requires Improvement' by Ofsted in August 2018. This followed a period of intervention by the department after an earlier ‘Inadequate’ judgement in 2015. As a result, services in Lancashire are now in a period of support and supervision and will receive regular support and challenge from the department to ensure that recent improvements are sustained.

The government is committed to improving outcomes for disadvantaged children and young people. That is why our children’s social care reform programme is working to deliver a highly capable, highly skilled social work workforce as well as high performing services everywhere and a national system of excellent and innovative practice.

The Autumn Budget announced a further £410 million in 2019-20 for local authorities to invest in adult and children’s social care services. We are also investing £84 million in targeted evidence-based interventions to unlock better work with vulnerable children and their families. This is in addition to the over £200 billion that was made available at the 2015 Spending Review until 2020 for councils to deliver local services, including children’s services.