Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help reduce mortality rates amongst young adults who have recently left the care system.

The government commissioned the review of early deaths of care leavers to examine the unacceptably high number of deaths among care-experienced young people and to drive action to address it. The review’s central finding reinforces the government’s focus for care reform: too many care-experienced people enter adulthood lonely. That is why we have set out a comprehensive programme to prioritise building and maintaining relationships.

This includes over £25 million of funding this financial year to continue the rollout of the Staying Close programme. New duties from 30 September also require councils to publish how they will support care leavers into adulthood and introduce corporate parenting across government departments and key public bodies to ensure policies and services provide better support for care leavers.

For a young person, Staying Close means keeping somewhere settled to live rather than being moved along at 18 and having a network of people around them as they move into adulthood. Staying Close now runs in 47 local areas and will become a national duty for local areas, with full rollout expected by 2029. The Staying Close programme also includes funding for a mental health worker in each local authority to work directly with young people and upskill their teams.

To better prevent future deaths, we will explore how the Child Protection Authority could amplify learning across areas.