Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a timetable for updating the Statutory Guidance on Promoting the Health and Wellbeing of Looked After Children.

The government gave a commitment to update the statutory guidance ‘Promoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after children’, and to extend it to care leavers up to age 25, in the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ strategy for the reform of children’s social care. The update forms part of the wider mission in the strategy “to reduce the disparities in long-term mental and physical health outcomes and improve wellbeing for care-experienced people”. This commitment was reaffirmed in September 2023.

Work is underway to understand how the current guidance is working in practice and where changes are necessary. Timeframes will depend on the scope of changes needed. The Department for Education and Department for Health and Social Care will keep relevant stakeholders in the health and children’s social care sectors updated as the work progresses.