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78506

registered interest
date	16/07/2014
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Young People: Carers
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to improve the support available to young carers; and what discussions she has had with the Northern Ireland Executive on improving such support.
tabling member constituency	Strangford
tabling member printed	Jim Shannon
uin	206399
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 22/07/2014 answer text <p> </p><p>Improving support for carers of all ages is a priority for this Government. The Department for Education has provided over £2.7 million of funding to The Children’s Society and Carers Trust over four years between 2011 and 2015 to work with local authorities and voluntary and community organisations. This has helped to promote ‘whole family’ approaches to supporting young carers and identify and share existing good practice.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>We have also made significant changes to the law relating to young carers that will take effect from April 2015. Section 96 of the Children and Families Act 2014 delivers four things: it consolidates and simplifies the legislation relating to young carers’ assessments, making rights and duties clearer to both young people and practitioners; it extends the right to an assessment of needs for support to all young carers under the age of 18 regardless of who they care for, what type of care they provide or how often they provide it; it makes it clear to local authorities that they must carry out an assessment of a young carer’s needs for support on request or when the need becomes apparent; and it provides the appropriate links between children’s and adults’ legislation to enable local authorities to align the assessment of a young carer with an assessment of the person they care for.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>These changes will work with provisions in the Care Act that also support the combining of children’s and adults’ assessments, and the draft guidance on a whole family approach to assessing and supporting adults. Together they will provide a clear legislative framework that will support local authorities to consider the needs of the whole family, deliver coordinated packages of support and protect children and young people from excessive or inappropriate caring roles.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The legislative changes outlined above only affect young carers in England. The Department for Education has not discussed them with the Northern Ireland Executive.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Crewe and Nantwich answering member printed Mr Edward Timpson question first answered 22/07/2014 15:07:37 answering member 1605 label Biography information for Edward Timpson previous answer version 11718 answering member constituency Crewe and Nantwich answering member printed Mr Edward Timpson answering member 1605 label Biography information for Edward Timpson
tabling member	4131 label Biography information for Jim Shannon

64921

registered interest
date	01/07/2014
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Adoption
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the time taken to adopt a child.
tabling member constituency	Strangford
tabling member printed	Jim Shannon
uin	203216
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 07/07/2014 answer text <p>Major reforms in the Children and Families Act 2014 are helping to speed up the legal adoption process for children in England, support quicker matching and ensure earlier placement of children with foster families who may go on to adopt them. Adoption scorecards were introduced in 2012 and are driving improvements locally. We implemented a new adopter approval process last year and under this new process prospective adopters can now be approved in just six months. New training materials and other tools have been developed by the College of Social Work and Research in Practice to improve the skills of social workers so they are better placed to quickly judge what is best for each child. In 2012-13, the number of adopters was 34% up on the year before.</p> answering member constituency Crewe and Nantwich answering member printed Mr Edward Timpson question first answered 07/07/2014 15:28:29 answering member 1605 label Biography information for Edward Timpson
tabling member	4131 label Biography information for Jim Shannon

46239

registered interest
date	01/04/2014
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
house id	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the incidence of truancy was in schools in the latest period for which figures are available; and what steps he is taking to reduce it and to involve parents in those efforts.
tabling member constituency	Strangford
tabling member printed	Jim Shannon
uin	194633
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 07/04/2014 answer text <p>Since the report by Charlie Taylor on improving school attendance, the Government's focus has been on reducing absence overall and encouraging schools to address patterns of poor attendance early.</p><p> </p><p>To help schools do this, the Department for Education reduced the threshold at which pupils were classified as persistent absent, from 20% to 15% of sessions missed. In 2012, we increased the level of the school attendance penalty fines, from £50 and £100 to £60 and £120 respectively, and in 2013 reduced the overall timescales for paying fines from 42 to 28 days. The second most common reason for absence is family holiday, so we tightened the law in September 2013 so that headteachers could only grant requests for leave during term time in exceptional circumstances.</p><p> </p><p>Our reforms are working. In 2012/13, 300,895 pupils were persistently absent, down from 433,130 in 2009/10 - a fall of almost a third. 130,000 fewer pupils were missing 15% of school in 2012/13 compared to 2010/11. Overall absence rates are down from 6.3% of possible sessions missed in 2008/09 to 5.2% in 2012/13.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency South West Norfolk answering member printed Elizabeth Truss question first answered 07/04/2014 12:00:00 answering member 4097 label Biography information for Elizabeth Truss
tabling member	4131 label Biography information for Jim Shannon