Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has been made of the level of support available to foster carers to meet the needs of children in care during the covid-19 outbreak.

The COVID-19 outbreak has brought unprecedented challenges to some foster families. Our priority is to protect foster families, to keep them together and continue to offer safety and stability to the vulnerable children they care for. That is why we have committed £125,000 between June and October to fund a new FosterlinePlus service. Foster families experiencing difficulties will have free access to a range of specialist one-to-one services. We will continue to monitor this support to better understand the issues foster families are facing and how the department can tackle them.

The government has also provided over £3.7 billion of additional funding to support local authorities in meeting COVID-19 related pressures, including within children’s social care. We know that local authorities and fostering agencies are responding to the challenge by finding innovative ways to continue to support their foster carers, and we will keep this under very close review over the coming weeks and months.