Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to implement the recommendations of the Twenty-Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2022-23 on Evaluating innovation projects in children’s social care, HC 38, published on 22 November 2022.

The recommendations from the Twenty-Seventh Report of the Committee of Public Accounts rightly highlighted that the innovation projects in children’s social care needed to be fully evaluated and that the subsequent learning from previous innovation work should be sufficiently scaled and spread.

The department is committed to ensuring that evaluation and learning drive how it sets the direction for practice in children’s social care. Whilst the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee have been enacted, there is more that will be done to work with the sector, key stakeholders and those with lived experience, to ensure that this learning translates into improvements for children, young people and their families.