Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the reduction in the daily placement fee for third-sector organisations on the number and quality of placements available for trainee social workers.

We are currently reviewing the changes to the daily placement fee and the other elements of the education support grant on placement providers and practice educators for 2014 academic year with the (external) social work education funding advisory group. This will affect decisions on the level of the daily placement fee in the 2015 academic year, which we make when programme budgets are finalised.