Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department will take steps to support local leaders in identifying children in (a) unsafe households and (b) deprived households.

Statutory guidance in ‘Working together to safeguard children’ (2018) is clear that anyone who has concerns about a child’s welfare should make a referral to local authority children’s social care, and that they should do so immediately if there is a concern that the child is suffering significant harm or is likely to do so.

Our communications campaign, ‘Together, we can tackle child abuse’, has helped raise the awareness of abuse among the public and professionals, and has provided local authorities with resources they can use to raise awareness locally.

Disadvantaged children and young people who are in receipt of, or whose parents are in receipt of, one or more of the eligible benefits are entitled to free school meals and, to ensure that as many of these children as possible are able to claim this benefit, we provide an eligibility checking system that all local authorities can access; this makes the checking process as quick and straightforward as possible.