Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will extend the Care Leavers Internship Scheme to include all care-experienced and adopted young people.

Care leavers aged 18-30 years old are able to apply for an internship through the scheme. The scheme is aimed at providing opportunities for care leavers, rather than the wider cohort of all care-experienced children and young people. This is because care leavers can suffer from poor outcomes and have to make the transition to independence at a much younger age than their peers, often without the support of familial or wider support networks.