Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support children in foster care in (a) Lincolnshire and (b) the East Midlands.

The government is committed to ensuring that every child in care grows up with the love, care and support they need to achieve and thrive.

The government is supporting children in care by expanding ‘The Mockingbird Family Model’, which is an innovative, evidence-based approach. Relationships are central to the design of the programme, which involves six to ten satellite families grouped into a constellation around a hub home carer. In East Midlands, this is being delivered as part of the Foster with East Midlands recruitment hub, which launched in March 2024 and comprises of four local authorities, including Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Derbyshire.

Across England, ten fostering regional hubs, covering 64% of all local authorities, have been set up to reform the way areas recruit and retain foster carers. An additional £15 million was announced to support this programme at the Autumn Budget 2024 and we intend to move towards full national roll out in the next financial year. Lincolnshire is not currently in a hub, but departmental officials have spoken with local authority leaders about their options to become part of an existing or new hub. In the past year, Lincolnshire participated in Fosterlink, a department funded diagnostic and analysis project to support improved recruitment of foster carers.