Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to ensure accommodation for homeless and looked after 16 and 17 year olds is regulated and safe.

We have consulted on a set of ambitious proposals to reform unregulated provision for children in care and care leavers, including how to enforce new national standards for providers to drive up quality, keeping young people safer and delivering better outcomes. We will be responding to this consultation and setting out our plans for ensuring the high-quality of unregulated semi-independent and independent accommodation in due course. Our proposals are available here:
https://consult.education.gov.uk/unregulated-provision/unregulated-provision-children-in-care/.

The government is clear that any 16- or 17-year-old who is homeless, or threatened with homelessness, must be assessed by children’s services, as set in the statutory guidance. This guidance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/provision-of-accommodation-for-16-and-17-year-olds-who-may-be-homeless-and-or-require-accommodation.

Every child, who children’s services have a duty to accommodate, will have to be placed in a setting that meets the new national standards. There are only 2 circumstances in which a local authority might find that a homeless young person should be accommodated by homelessness services under the Housing Act rather than by children’s services under section 20 of the Children’s Act. These are where the young person is either:

1. Not a child in need.
2. A 16- or 17-year-old child in need who, having been properly and fully advised of the implications and having the capacity to reach a decision, has decided that they do not want to be accommodated under section 20.

In those circumstances, where a young person is accommodated by homelessness services under the Housing Act rather than by children’s services, the department will continue to work together with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, local communities, the government and with sector experts, to ensure this group of young people get the right support and accommodation they need.