Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help local social services to develop primary prevention strategies to reduce child maltreatment; and what discussions she has had with those services on involving other services in the development of those strategies.

The Government’s statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children, revised last year, is crystal clear about the importance that we attach to preventative services. Providing help early, before issues and problems escalate, is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later.

The Working Together guidance sets out that local agencies should work together to put processes in place for the effective assessment of the needs of individual children who may benefit from early help services. It is right that decisions about the provision of services, including preventative, early help services, are taken locally by agencies that are best placed to plan provision, taking account of local needs and circumstances.

Through the Children and Social Work Bill, the Government is introducing a stronger but more flexible statutory framework that will support local partners to work together more effectively to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. The new framework will allow the safeguarding partners – namely health services, the police and the local authority – much greater freedom to make decisions themselves as to who they work with and how best to arrange their services to improve the outcomes for children in their area. The new arrangements are based on the findings of the Wood Review, published in May 2016, which included extensive consultation with the sector.

In 2013 the government set up the Early Intervention Foundation, funded by the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health, and the Department for Communities and Local Government. It operates independently of central government, to establish a robust evidence base for what approaches work best in early intervention and to support commissioners in implementing early intervention programmes and practice in their local areas.

The Government is also setting up a new What Works Centre for children’s social care. The What Works Centre will focus on improving outcomes for our most vulnerable children and their families. It will identify best practice in supporting children suffering from, or at risk of, abuse and/or neglect. The WWC will be able to build a truly comprehensive picture of what excellence looks like by looking at both effective interventions and practice systems. We expect the WWC to work in close partnership with the sector and bring new and innovative approaches to gathering, disseminating and embedding its findings, drawing on lessons from a wide range of interventions – including reviews of serious cases and our Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme.

Over the last two years the Government has invested over £100 million in 53 projects through the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme. The programme is supporting local authorities and other organisations to develop new approaches in children’s social care, including preventing child maltreatment. In April this year we committed a further £200m to support innovation and improvement over the next four years.