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1719175

registered interest
date	20/05/2024
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	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.
tabling member printed	The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
uin	HL4782
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/05/2024 answer text <p>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:</p><ul><li>In January 2024, the government set out a support package for local government worth £600 million, including £500 million of ringfenced funding for children’s and adults’ social care services distributed through the Social Care Grant. Councils were advised to invest in areas that will help place children’s social care services on a sustainable financial footing. This includes investment in expanding family help and targeted early intervention, expanding kinship care and boosting the number of foster carers.</li></ul><p> </p><ul><li>Over financial year 2024/25, a total of £5 billion will be distributed to local authorities through the Social Care Grant, including a £1.2 billion increase from financial year 2023/24.</li></ul><p> </p><ul><li>Councils in England will see an increase in Core Spending Power of up to £4.5 billion in financial year 2024/25, or 7.5% in cash terms, an above inflation increase, rising from £60.2 billion in 2023/24 to £64.7 billion in 2024/25.</li></ul><p> </p><p>This additional funding illustrates our commitment to support councils in continuing to deliver high-quality services to vulnerable children and families.</p><p> </p><p>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: <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/642460653d885d000fdade73/Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf" target="_blank">https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/642460653d885d000fdade73/Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf</a>.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p><p> </p><p>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.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 24/05/2024 13:10:24 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4996 label Biography information for The Lord Bishop of Newcastle

1719176

registered interest
date	20/05/2024
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to (1) update statutory guidance to classify homeless children as needing support from children’s social care services, and (2) disseminate updated information on rights and entitlements.
tabling member printed	The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
uin	HL4783
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/05/2024 answer text <p>It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.</p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 24/05/2024 13:48:12 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4996 label Biography information for The Lord Bishop of Newcastle

1659835

registered interest
date	11/09/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking, beyond the school gates, to provide support to children who have interacted with the children’s social care system.
tabling member printed	The Lord Bishop of Durham
uin	HL10026
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 25/09/2023 answer text <p>Our analysis for reporting year ending March 2022 for children in social care shows:</p><ul><li>At Key Stage 2, the percentage of all pupils meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths in 2022 was 59%, compared to 29% for children in social care, also called children in need (CIN), which includes looked-after children.</li><li>At Key Stage 4, the percentage of all pupils achieving grade 5-9 in English and Maths in 2022 was 50%, compared to 12% for CIN pupils.</li></ul><p>After accounting for a wide range of factors such as rates of special educational need in these cohorts, children who have interacted with the social care system were around 25-50% less likely to achieve grades 5-9 in GCSE English and Maths, compared to pupils who were not in social care.</p><p>The government has put in place a number of measures to support the educational attainment of looked-after children. Every local authority in England must appoint a Virtual School Head, who has a statutory duty to promote the educational achievement of all children in their care, wherever they live or are educated. Looked-after children attract Pupil Premium Plus funding of £2,530 per child up to age 16, which is managed by the Virtual School Head, working with the child’s education setting to deliver objectives in their individual Personal Education Plans.</p><p>‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ sets out our strategy to reform the children’s social care system, including improving the education, employment, and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. The department will introduce a gold standard accreditation scheme for further and higher education institutions supporting care leavers, consult on plans to expand the Virtual School Head role to include children in care and care leavers up to age 25, and roll out a further £24 million in Pupil Premium Plus style funding between 2023 and 2025 to bolster educational support available to children in care and care leavers in 16-19 education.</p><p>The Children in Need Review, which concluded in June 2019, identified for the first time that 1.6 million children needed a social worker between 2012 and 2018, and that these children have worse educational outcomes at every stage, with children who need a social worker in their GCSE year being 50% as likely to achieve a strong pass in English and Maths as their peers.</p><p>To address this, in June 2021 the department extended Virtual School Head duties to include all children with a social worker, giving them a strategic leadership role to champion the educational attendance, attainment, and progress of children with a social worker. This means that they have a lead role in levelling up educational outcomes for children with a social worker and narrowing the attainment gap, so every child has the opportunity to reach their potential.</p><p>We recently announced over £1 billion for programmes to improve early help services from birth to adulthood, including delivering on Family Hubs and helping families facing multiple-disadvantage through the Supporting Families programme and Holiday Activities and Food programme. Investing in support for families helps children to have happy, healthy childhoods. It can stop issues escalating and help them to achieve better outcomes. The Supporting Families Programme has supported over half a million families, to make sustained improvements to their lives, and is projected to help a further 300,000.</p><p>In ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, we outlined our plans to build on the strengths of current early help services, through the creation of family help. These reforms are central to ensuring children growing up with loving relationships and stability. The department is creating a service which meets the whole needs of a family and works to their strengths, delivered by multi-disciplinary teams working collaboratively with their local partners. Through the £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder programme, we will test implementation in up to 12 local areas over two years and help assess requirements to achieve meaningful change system-wide.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran grouped question UIN HL10024 HL10025 question first answered 25/09/2023 13:12:29 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4312 label Biography information for The Lord Bishop of Durham

1648340

registered interest
date	27/06/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what recent steps they have taken to improve the quality and accessibility of social care services for children.
tabling member printed	Lord Hay of Ballyore
uin	HL8828
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/07/2023 answer text <p>On 2 February 2023 the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, an implementation strategy and consultation, setting out plans to reform children’s social care. This strategy sets out how we will help families overcome challenges, keep children safe, and make sure children in care have stable loving homes, long-term loving relationships, and opportunities for a good life.</p><p>As of 1 April 2023, there are 153 local authorities responsible for ensuring and overseeing the effective delivery of social care services for children. Since the introduction of our Improvement and Intervention programme in 2017, which aimed to reduce the number of local authorities rated Inadequate by Ofsted, the number of Inadequate local authorities has dropped from 20% to 8.5%, and the number of Good and Outstanding local authorities has risen from 36% to 59%. This programme specifically offers support to areas with early signs of failure and intervenes when failure has already taken place.</p><p>Over the next two years, through ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department will address urgent issues in children’s social care, and lay the foundations for wider-reaching reform across the whole system.</p><p> </p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 11/07/2023 13:14:03 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4352 label Biography information for Lord Hay of Ballyore

1641707

registered interest
date	05/06/2023
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the briefing The Cost of Delaying Reform to Children’s Social Care, published in May, which summarised analysis commissioned by the children charities Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, the NSPCC, and the National Children’s Bureau.
tabling member printed	Lord Willis of Knaresborough
uin	HL8240
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 16/06/2023 answer text <p>There needs to be a fundamental shift away from crisis intervention and towards earlier intervention, and the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ Implementation Strategy and Consultation sets out how the department intend to achieve that. The consultation can be found attached. These are complex reforms, with complicated systemic interactions, and it is critical that we take a test and learn approach and make sure we have models that can be rolled out effectively.</p><p>Alongside the Implementation Strategy, the department has announced we are investing £200 million by 2024/25 to address urgent issues facing children and families, to lay the foundations for whole system reform and set national direction for change. This is on top of the £142 million invested by 2024/25 to take forward reforms to unregulated provision in children’s social care, the £160 million as announced in March 2022 to deliver our Adoption Strategy over the next three years, the £259 million to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes over the Spending Review 21 period, and the £230 million over the same period to support young people leaving care.</p><p>This is all in addition to the £3.85 billion social care grant that the government is providing to local authorities for adults and children’s social care this year.</p><p>After two years, the department will refresh the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ strategy, and seek to scale up the new approaches we have tested and developed, including bringing forward new legislation where necessary (subject to parliamentary time).​</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 16/06/2023 13:59:49 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran attachment 1 file name HL8240_Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf title HL8240_pdf
tabling member	4151 label Biography information for Lord Willis of Knaresborough

1520177

registered interest
date	10/10/2022
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask His Majesty's Government what information, if any, they collect from the National Deprivation of Liberty Court on increases in (1) 'inherent jurisdiction' unregulated placements, and (2) non-legally compliant 'secure accommodation' placements; and whether they can provide a breakdown of this information by (1) age, (2) gender, and (3) race.
tabling member printed	Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede
uin	HL2444
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/10/2022 answer text <p>The department does not collect information from the National Deprivation of Liberty Court on the number or characteristics of children subject to a Deprivation of Liberty Order.</p><p>The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory are collecting data from the national court over a pilot period and publishing monthly to improve our understanding of the cases that are being heard by the court. Further information can be accessed here: <a href="https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/news/nuffield-family-justice-observatory-to-monitor-data-from-new-national-dols-deprivation-of-liberty-court" target="_blank">https://www.nuffieldfjo.org.uk/news/nuffield-family-justice-observatory-to-monitor-data-from-new-national-dols-deprivation-of-liberty-court</a>.</p><p>It is important to note that a setting that provides care and accommodation is subject to regulation and must be registered as a children’s home. Where a deprivation of liberty order involves a setting that is not registered as a children's home, guidance issued by the President of the Family Division is clear that an application to register the provision with Ofsted must be made within seven working days from the date of the deprivation of liberty order. Further information can be accessed here: <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/addendum-to-practice-guidance-placements-in-unregistered-childrens-homes-in-england-or-unregistered-care-home-services-in-wales/" target="_blank">https://www.judiciary.uk/guidance-and-resources/addendum-to-practice-guidance-placements-in-unregistered-childrens-homes-in-england-or-unregistered-care-home-services-in-wales/</a>.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 24/10/2022 11:50:26 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	3154 label Biography information for Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

1468286

registered interest
date	07/06/2022
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the funding recommendations in The independent review of children’s social care: final report, published on 23 May; and what plans they have to invest in the care system in response to the report.
tabling member printed	Baroness Blower
uin	HL705
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 21/06/2022 answer text <p>The department is now considering the recommendations of the Independent Review of Children’s Social care carefully with those with care experience and all interested stakeholders. We will publish an implementation strategy later this year, which will set out how the department will improve children’s social care. This will include establishing a National Implementation Board that includes people with their own experience of the care system.</p><p>In the meantime, the department is taking action, which includes:</p><ul><li>Support for families with a multi-million-pound package to improve access to support, advice, and services from birth through to adulthood. This includes a total of £695 million for Supporting Families over the next three years. As such, up to 300,000 of the most vulnerable families can be helped before they hit crisis point.</li><li>Getting the right placements in the right places for children in care by investing £259 million to support provision and create additional places in children’s homes. This is the biggest package of investment in children’s social care placements since 2010. The department has also invested £142 million to introduce new national standards, Ofsted registration, and inspection for supported accommodation for young people. This provision that is currently unregulated.</li></ul><p>As the department develops its implementation strategy, it will consider where legislation might be required.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran grouped question UIN HL703 HL704 HL706 question first answered 21/06/2022 15:52:37 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4724 label Biography information for Baroness Blower

1468288

registered interest
date	07/06/2022
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to improve outcomes for young people receiving social care; and how their plans fit within the levelling up agenda.
tabling member printed	Baroness Blower
uin	HL707
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 21/06/2022 answer text <p>Local authorities have access to £54.1 billion core spending power this financial year to deliver their services, including for children and young people. This is £3.7 billion more than in 2021/22 and includes a £2.35 billion social care grant.</p><p>The department is also investing an additional £200 million in funding for the Supporting Families programme by 2024/25, taking planned investment across the next three years to £695 million.</p><p>In June 2021 the department extended the duties of Virtual School Heads to include all children with a social worker, backed by £16.6 million of new funding, which will continue in the 2022/23 financial year. This delivers a key recommendation of the Children in Need Review and now means there is a local champion for Children in Need in every local authority across England. Since May 2020 we have also made £26.6 million available to help boost the educational outcomes of children with a social worker and keep them safe from harm, including up to £20.3 million to place social workers in schools in 21 local authorities to support teachers to spot signs of abuse and neglect more quickly.</p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 21/06/2022 15:59:24 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	4724 label Biography information for Baroness Blower

1463831

registered interest
date	17/05/2022
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Action for Children Too little, too late: early help and early intervention spending in England, published on 28 February.
tabling member printed	Baroness Masham of Ilton
uin	HL306
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 31/05/2022 answer text <p>The ‘Too Little, Too Late’ report recommends an increase in funding for a range of early intervention services. This year, the government announced a £500 million package to give families effective support earlier by creating a network of family hubs in half of the council areas in England and helping up to 300,000 more vulnerable families through the Support Families programme.</p><p>The report’s other recommendations include a legal duty for early help and additional data collection on early help. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has now set out its final recommendations, and we will consider those relevant to early help to inform any next steps.</p><p> </p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 31/05/2022 11:42:35 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	1850 label Biography information for Baroness Masham of Ilton

1439946

registered interest
date	10/03/2022
answering body	Department for Education
answering dept id	60
answering dept short name	Education
answering dept sort name	Education
hansard heading	Children: Social Services
house id	2
legislature	25277 pref label House of Lords
question text	To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to measure progress towards the restoration of disabled children’s social care services to pre-pandemic levels.
tabling member printed	Lord Browne of Belmont
uin	HL6854
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/03/2022 answer text <p>I refer the noble Lord to the answer given by my hon. Friend, the Minister for Children and Families, on 28 February 2022 to Question <a href="https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2022-02-18/125599" target="_blank">125599</a>.</p> answering member printed Baroness Barran question first answered 24/03/2022 12:41:27 answering member 4703 label Biography information for Baroness Barran
tabling member	3801 label Biography information for Lord Browne of Belmont