Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of demand for local authority-provided children’s services.

The department publishes a range of statistics on trends in the level of demand for children’s services. This data is available to all local authorities to help benchmark their services and can be found in the Local Authority Interactive Tool, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-interactive-tool-lait.

In relation to children’s social care, the department worked with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, HM Treasury and the sector to understand the level of funding needed for local authorities to meet demand and deliver statutory services in preparation for the 2019 Spending Round. My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has now announced that local government is getting an additional £1 billion grant for social care for adults and children in 2020-21. This is in addition to the continuation of existing social care grants. Work to further our understanding of demand will continue as part of preparation for the next Spending Review.