Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to (a) ensure that vulnerable children have access and contact with social workers during the covid-19 restrictions and (b) support teachers working in school who are the only point of contact outside the home for vulnerable children to maintain that contact.

Our latest guidance on supporting vulnerable children is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-on-vulnerable-children-and-young-people.

We are committed to ensuring the safety and protection of vulnerable children and young people, particularly during the current period. This is why education settings remained open for these children and local authorities are maintaining contact with them.

Children’s social care guidance states that we expect local authorities and social workers to make judgements about visiting vulnerable children. Within the statutory framework, they should prioritise children’s welfare as paramount, balancing the risks to children, the risks to families and risks to the workforce. There are many ways to keep in touch with a child, young person or family without physical face-to-face contact and it is expected that these will be utilised appropriately and proportionately in response to the risk assessment undertaken for the child on a case by case basis. The guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-childrens-social-care-services/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-local-authorities-on-childrens-social-care.

To ensure children and young people can maintain contact with a social worker, we are providing laptops and tablets to children with a social worker who do not have access to a device otherwise, either privately or through school. We are also providing 4G wireless routers to children with a social worker at secondary school in order to support them to maintain contact with their social worker and/or access remote education at home.

The department’s safeguarding guidance sets out that a school’s child protection policy should be updated to reflect the arrangements in place to keep children not physically attending safe, especially online, and how concerns about these children should be progressed. In addition, the advice sets out that the Designated Safeguarding Lead (or deputy) should provide support to teachers and pastoral staff to ensure that contact is maintained with children (and their families) who are not yet returning to school. The guidance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-safeguarding-in-schools-colleges-and-other-providers/coronavirus-covid-19-safeguarding-in-schools-colleges-and-other-providers.