Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's Kinship Care Strategy published on 15 December 2023, what criteria is used to allocate children's social care services; and what steps her Department is taking to support kinship carers.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Newcastle (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase investment in children’s services and provide updated funding formulae to (1) direct resources according to deprivation-based need, and (2) account for changing levels of deprivation.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government is aware the costs of delivering children’s social care are rising, which is why the department has already taken action and announced a series of additional measures:
This additional funding illustrates our commitment to support councils in continuing to deliver high-quality services to vulnerable children and families.
But the department knows that rising costs are unsustainable and that whole system reform is needed. It is more important than ever that the department continues with the plans to improve and stabilise the children’s social care system. The department's ambitious strategy, set out in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ will bring about fundamental reform, rebalancing local authority spending from costly acute services to effective earlier intervention, thereby improving outcomes for children and families. More information can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/642460653d885d000fdade73/Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf.
When ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ was published, the department announced an additional £200 million funding for implementation. However, this is only part of the wider picture of spending on children’s social care reform. In total, across the department's programmes, almost £700 million has been committed to start delivering the reforms.
In ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department committed to work with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to update, publish and consult on a new funding distribution formula. Departmental officials are working in partnership towards implementing an updated approach to distributing available funding for children and young people’s services, based on an up-to-date assessment of relative need in local authorities.
Whilst the government is not able to implement funding reform in this spending period, the department remain committed to updating the funding formula for children’s services to better direct resources to where they are most needed, and work will continue across government to that end.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking with local authorities to help increase the rate of reunification of children in kinship care with their birth families.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the impact of local authority specialist family reunification teams on trends in the number of children who have been reunited with their birth parents in the last 10 years.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Caroline Ansell (Conservative - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring local authorities to (a) measure and (b) publish their performance on reuniting children in kinship care with their birth parents.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to ensuring that looked after children are able to achieve permanence. Where a looked after child’s permanence plan is to return to the care of their parents, there should be a robust decision-making process to ensure this decision is safe and sustainable and will safeguard and promote their welfare. Local authorities should set out what support and services will be provided following reunification.
In the 2023 update to the statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ the department set out that local authorities may consider whether family group decision-making would support the child’s transition home from care, and the role the family network could play in supporting this.
The £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme will test family network reforms including through increased use of family group decision making. This reform area will empower families by prioritising family-led solutions, engaging wider family networks throughout decisions made about a child which may support reunification, including back to birth parents.
The number and percentage of looked after children returning home to live with parents or other people with parental responsibility is published annually in the department’s children looked after statistical release and can be interrogated at local authority level on GOV.UK. Figures are available for the last five years. The department does not intend to break down the data any further to identify returns to birth parents from kinship care.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on the implementation of the National Kinship Care Strategy.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
‘Championing Kinship Care’, which was published on 15 December 2023, sets out the department’s vision for a future kinship care system and how kinship carers can be better supported, so that more children can thrive. The department is investing £20 million of funding in 2024/25 to help move towards a children’s social care system with kinship at its heart.
The department will launch a Pathfinder programme in 2024 in up to eight local authorities to provide special guardian kinship carers, who care for previously looked after children, with a financial allowance to be paid at the same rate as foster care. This programme will be backed by an investment of £16 million in 2024/25 and the department will explore expanding eligibility to broader cohorts of kinship carers and all local authorities in the future, subject to the findings of our evaluation. The department is currently working through the criteria for the eight local authorities, and will share further information on the Pathfinder in the coming months.
The department also announced £3.8 million in 2024/25 to expand the role of Virtual School Heads to specifically include championing the education, attendance and attainment of children in kinship care. Local authority funding allocations were published in March 2024 and the role extension will come into effect from September 2024.
The department is also delivering a package of training and support that all kinship carers across England can access if they wish to within this Spending Review period. The department is pleased to confirm the charity Kinship as the successful training partner and that the service went live in April 2024.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on the implementation of the financial allowance pathfinder.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will launch a Pathfinder programme in 2024 in up to eight local authorities to provide special guardian kinship carers, who care for previously looked after children, with a financial allowance to be paid at the same rate as foster care. This programme will be backed by an investment of £16 million in 2024/25 and the department will explore expanding eligibility to broader cohorts of kinship carers and all local authorities in the future, subject to the findings of our evaluation. Local authority selection will take place this year. The department will also work with an evaluation partner to make sure that the programme can provide robust evidence for future rollout. The department will share further information on the Pathfinder in the coming months.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when she plans to announce the eight local authorities selected for the financial allowance pathfinder.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department will launch a Pathfinder programme in 2024 in up to eight local authorities to provide special guardian kinship carers, who care for previously looked after children, with a financial allowance to be paid at the same rate as foster care. This programme will be backed by an investment of £16 million in 2024/25 and the department will explore expanding eligibility to broader cohorts of kinship carers and all local authorities in the future, subject to the findings of our evaluation. Local authority selection will take place this year. The department will also work with an evaluation partner to make sure the programme can provide robust evidence for future rollout. The department will share further information on the Pathfinder in the coming months.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's consultation outcome entitled Children's social care: stable homes, built on love, published on 21 September 2023, what steps she is taking to monitor the implementation of the recommendations of that consultation by local authorities.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to laying the foundations for a comprehensive and long-term reform plan to children’s social care over the two years immediately following the publication of its implementation strategy ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’. The department will be refreshing its strategy at the end of this point. The department is halfway through this first phase of reform, and has made significant progress on many of the commitments made in the strategy.
In December 2023, the department published the first national kinship care strategy ‘Championing Kinship Care’, a ‘Children’s Social Care National Framework’, a revised statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ and a data strategy.
Through these publications, the department is monitoring the implementation of its reform programme and has set out how local authorities’ and partners’ roles and responsibilities will change through new national expectations, and further explained their role in delivering ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’.
The ‘test and learn’ approach the department is taking through its pathfinder pilots will ensure that the department will find the most efficient models of delivery, providing the best possible outcomes for children and families. When the department comes to expand and roll out programmes across more local authorities’ areas, it wants to ensure reform delivery is supported by the evidence that it works.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's consultation outcome entitled Children's social care: stable homes, built on love, published on 21 September 2023, if she will expand the implementation of that consultation outcome to more local authority areas.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is committed to laying the foundations for a comprehensive and long-term reform plan to children’s social care over the two years immediately following the publication of its implementation strategy ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’. The department will be refreshing its strategy at the end of this point. The department is halfway through this first phase of reform, and has made significant progress on many of the commitments made in the strategy.
In December 2023, the department published the first national kinship care strategy ‘Championing Kinship Care’, a ‘Children’s Social Care National Framework’, a revised statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’ and a data strategy.
Through these publications, the department is monitoring the implementation of its reform programme and has set out how local authorities’ and partners’ roles and responsibilities will change through new national expectations, and further explained their role in delivering ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’.
The ‘test and learn’ approach the department is taking through its pathfinder pilots will ensure that the department will find the most efficient models of delivery, providing the best possible outcomes for children and families. When the department comes to expand and roll out programmes across more local authorities’ areas, it wants to ensure reform delivery is supported by the evidence that it works.