Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made an assessment of the (a) value for money of the Pause programme (b) potential merits of introducing (i) that scheme and (ii) similar programmes nationwide.

Pause was successful in receiving funding through round 1 of the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to pilot the programme in 7 sites, then in round 2 to scale and spread the programme to 9 new local authority areas.

Evaluation of round 1 of the programme was completed in 2017 and estimated that the yearly cost savings attributed to each child removal that had been avoided were £57,102. The report is published at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-care-pause-programme.

Evaluation of round 2 ends in March 2020 and is due to be published in the summer. Studies of both rounds use a before and after impact evaluation design to understand women’s outcomes at the start and throughout the programme. These findings will inform further decisions about continued scaling up of Pause both within the pilot local authorities and nationwide.