Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on the roll out of the Championing Kinship Care strategy; and what her planned timetable is for deploying it nationally.

In December 2023, the department published 'Championing Kinship Care', which is the first ever national kinship care strategy. The department is investing £20 million of funding in the 2024/25 financial year for Championing Kinship Care to help move towards a children’s social care system with kinship at its heart.

Since the publication of Championing Kinship Care, the department has:

• Published its recruitment campaign for the first ever Kinship Ambassador
• Published updated local authority funding allocations for the 2024/25 financial year for Virtual School Heads, including the £3.8 million uplift to cover their extended duties to promote the educational outcomes of children in kinship care.
• Launched a package of training and support that will be delivered by Kinship. The service will provide both online and in-person training sessions for kinship carers and will cover topics such as contact with parents, how to register for a new school and support with caring for teenagers.

The department will provide an update on the financial allowance pathfinder programme in the coming months.