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<p>The government wants every child to be in a stable, loving home that is right for
them.</p><p>One of the key principles of the legislation which underpins the UK’s
child protection system, is that children are best looked after within their families.
However, that is not always possible and, as a last resort, local authorities can
apply to the courts for a care or supervision order where the child is suffering,
or is at risk of suffering, significant harm. In making their decisions, the courts
must be satisfied that the threshold for significant harm has been met and that taking
the child from his or her family’s care will be in the child’s best interests.</p><p>
</p><p>Where a child cannot live at home, we must make sure they are safe and receive
the highest quality care, which is why we are working hard to improve the social care
support for children across England through our reform programme, Putting Children
First. We have also established the Children’s Social Care What Works Centre, whose
initial research priority focuses on ‘what works in safely reducing the need for children
to enter care’.</p><p>In the Autumn Budget, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer announced an additional £410 million for adult and children’s social
care in 2019-20. A further £84 million is also being invested over the next 5 years
through the Strengthening Families, Protecting Children programme. This will build
on three of our most promising Innovation Programme projects, with the aim of improving
social work practice to enable children to stay safely at home where that is in their
best interests.</p><p>This investment is in addition to the almost £270 million the
department has invested in our Innovation and Improvement programmes since 2014. There
have been 4 programmes in local authorities in the East Midlands region and over 90
in local authorities across England to help innovate and re-design service delivery
to achieve higher quality. The Creating Strong Communities model, for example, developed
by North East Lincolnshire has been designed to fundamentally change the way local
practitioners and partners in North East Lincolnshire work together to safeguard vulnerable
children.</p><p>The number of children taken into care in the East Midlands region
and Nottingham local authority area is shown in the attached table. The department
does not collect this data by parliamentary constituency area.</p><p>Figures on children
taken into care by legal status is published for England in Table C1 of the statistical
release “Children Looked after in England including adoptions: 2017:2018” at <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2017-to-2018"
target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2017-to-2018</a></p><p>
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