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1002013

registered interest
date	05/11/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his department will make an assessment of the potential merits of developing guidance on achieving permanence for (a) looked after children and young people and (b) people with special educational needs and disabilities; and whether such permanence is defined as a core purpose of children’s social care.
tabling member constituency	Lincoln
tabling member printed	Karen Lee
uin	188259
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 13/11/2018 answer text <p>The government recognises the importance of securing permanence for looked after children and young people. Planning for permanence is central to children and families social work.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review Regulations 2010 and the supporting statutory guidance set out clear expectations on planning for permanence to ensure that children have a secure, stable and loving family to support them through childhood and beyond and to give them a sense of security, continuity, commitment, identity and belonging. This includes those children identified as having special educational needs.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 13/11/2018 17:32:06 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4664 label Biography information for Karen Lee

1002015

registered interest
date	05/11/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of developing a national outcomes framework to benchmark all children’s services provision on (a) value, (b) quality, (c) cost and (c) outcomes.
tabling member constituency	Lincoln
tabling member printed	Karen Lee
uin	188260
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 13/11/2018 answer text <p>As set out in the Children Act 1989, local authorities are responsible for delivering children’s social care services. Ofsted is responsible for the Inspection of Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) and these inspections provide a robust assessment of the quality and outcomes of local services. The department publishes a range of statistics on activity rates, timeliness and costs of children’s services and these data are available to all local authorities to help benchmark their services. The department has no current plans to develop a national outcomes framework for children’s services.</p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi grouped question UIN 188264 question first answered 13/11/2018 17:41:50 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4664 label Biography information for Karen Lee

1002016

registered interest
date	05/11/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of reinstating the Commissioning Support Programme; and whether his Department plans to develop an improved programme to support children’s services commissioners.
tabling member constituency	Lincoln
tabling member printed	Karen Lee
uin	188261
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 12/11/2018 answer text <p>The department currently has no plans to reinstate the Commissioning Support Programme.</p><p>We are providing funding through our £200 million Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to test new commissioning arrangements so that children and young people are matched to the right care placements to meet their needs.</p><p>We are developing central commissioning arrangements for secure children’s homes placements and will be providing seed funding for fostering partnerships to introduce new or expanded collaborative approaches for commissioning, sufficiency planning and integrated models of care.</p><p>We have set up a Residential Care Leadership Board to drive forward improvements in commissioning and share learning and best practice across the sector. <strong><br> <br> </strong></p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 12/11/2018 11:29:11 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4664 label Biography information for Karen Lee

999522

registered interest
date	01/11/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference paragraph 5.18 of Budget 2018, how his Department will determine which local authorities receive funding for the children's social care improvement pilot schemes.
tabling member constituency	Ashton-under-Lyne
tabling member printed	Angela Rayner
uin	187043
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 09/11/2018 answer text <p>We will be investing £84 million over the next five years to support a number of local authorities who are struggling with issues of performance and demand. This targeted fund will support up to 20 local authorities to improve their social work practice and decision-making, enabling them to work more effectively with the most vulnerable children and their families. This investment will build on the lessons learned from promising innovation programmes in Hertfordshire, Leeds and North Yorkshire, which have supported more children to stay safely at home. We will work closely with local authorities and other sector partners between now and April to determine how best to allocate the funding.</p><p> </p><p> </p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 09/11/2018 14:43:27 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4356 label Biography information for Angela Rayner

985741

registered interest
date	11/10/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many private meetings the Minister has had with for-profit organisations on children's social care since the beginning of his appointment.
tabling member constituency	South Shields
tabling member printed	Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck
uin	178323
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 18/10/2018 answer text <p>The department meets regularly with a wide range of organisations, including charities, local authorities and for-profit organisations, regarding children's social care. The department has met with the following for-profit organisations regarding how they can support improved outcomes for children:</p><ul><li>techUK</li><li>Amazon</li><li>Spectra</li><li>Public</li><li>National Fostering Agency</li></ul><p> </p><p> </p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 18/10/2018 14:53:46 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4277 label Biography information for Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck

982877

registered interest
date	08/10/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance his Department provides to Directors of Children's Services to help them understand their responsibility to provide support services to kinship care families; and what monitoring his Department undertakes to measure the efficiency of those services nationally.
tabling member constituency	Hartlepool
tabling member printed	Mike Hill
uin	176602
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 16/10/2018 answer text <p>The government issued statutory guidance in 2011 for local authorities about supporting family and friends providing care for children who cannot live with their parents. The guidance makes it clear that children and young people should receive the support that they and their carers need to safeguard and promote their welfare. It explains that support can be provided under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989.</p><p>Local authorities are required to publish a policy setting out their approach to promoting and supporting the needs of all children living with family and friends as carers, regardless of their legal status. The department monitors whether local authorities are meeting this requirement and we have recently written to non-compliant local authorities to remind them of this duty and that the policy should be clear, regularly updated, and made freely and widely available.</p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 16/10/2018 15:05:39 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4644 label Biography information for Mike Hill

964324

registered interest
date	03/09/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what process is in place to enable local authorities to adopt the best practice from the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme.
tabling member constituency	South Shields
tabling member printed	Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck
uin	169384
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/09/2018 answer text <p>There is a comprehensive programme in place to share the learning from the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme and to enable local authorities, including those not directly involved in the programme, to adopt and adapt the most successful innovations. This includes funding for successful projects from the first rounds of the programme to scale and spread into new areas and funding for some of the best local authorities (the Partners in Practice) to support other improving local authorities to adopt and adapt successful projects.</p><p>In addition, there is an ongoing programme of local, regional and national events, workshops and seminars, attended to date by over 1200 people. There is a growing package of toolkits, case studies and learning guides available through the Innovation Programme website to help authorities understand and mobilise innovations.</p><p>The learning and evidence from the Innovation programme is also informing the new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, which will build a library of high quality evidence in children’s social care and ensure that it is widely used.</p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi grouped question UIN 169385 question first answered 11/09/2018 14:52:21 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4277 label Biography information for Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck

964325

registered interest
date	03/09/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding the Government plans to provide local authorities not involved in waves one or two of the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme to enable them to adopt successful practice from that programme over the next five years.
tabling member constituency	South Shields
tabling member printed	Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck
uin	169385
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/09/2018 answer text <p>There is a comprehensive programme in place to share the learning from the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme and to enable local authorities, including those not directly involved in the programme, to adopt and adapt the most successful innovations. This includes funding for successful projects from the first rounds of the programme to scale and spread into new areas and funding for some of the best local authorities (the Partners in Practice) to support other improving local authorities to adopt and adapt successful projects.</p><p>In addition, there is an ongoing programme of local, regional and national events, workshops and seminars, attended to date by over 1200 people. There is a growing package of toolkits, case studies and learning guides available through the Innovation Programme website to help authorities understand and mobilise innovations.</p><p>The learning and evidence from the Innovation programme is also informing the new What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, which will build a library of high quality evidence in children’s social care and ensure that it is widely used.</p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi grouped question UIN 169384 question first answered 11/09/2018 14:52:21 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	4277 label Biography information for Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck

945527

registered interest
date	20/07/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the gap between demand and provision of social care services for disabled children and their families; what steps he is taking to address any such gap; and if he will make a statement.
tabling member constituency	Reigate
tabling member printed	Crispin Blunt
uin	166434
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 25/07/2018 answer text <p>Working Together to Safeguard Children (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2" target="_blank">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2</a>) sets out how local authorities should provide effective, evidence-based services to protect and promote the welfare of children, including disabled children<em>. </em>The guidance was updated on July 4 2018 and states that it is better to provide services addressing needs early, rather than reacting later. The statutory duty to provide short breaks, introduced in 2011, falls on local authorities. In the transition up to 2015, £880 million was provided to local authorities; funding for short breaks is now is an un-ring-fenced part of the wider local government finance settlement.</p><p> </p><p>The 2015 Spending Review made available more than £200 billion until 2020 for councils to deliver the local services their communities want to see, including services for disabled children. In February, Parliament confirmed the 2018-19 settlement for local government which has provided a £1.3 billion increase in resources to local government over the next two years - £44.3 billion in 2017-18 to £45.6 billion in 2019-20. This recognises both the growing pressure on local government's services and higher-than-expected inflation levels.</p><p> </p><p>The Department for Education has committed almost £270 million since 2014 in addition to the core local government funding settlement, to help local authorities learn from what works and to support improvement in the children's social care sector. This includes £200 million for the Innovation Programme, which is funding the Ealing project to provide interventions in the form of therapeutic breaks, to disabled children and young people that reduce the risk of escalation, and provide long-term solutions to children and families. Learning from innovation projects is published on the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme website (http://innovationcsc.co.uk).</p><p>The government is conducting a review of the relative needs and resources of local authorities that will develop a robust, up-to-date approach to distributing funding across all local authorities in England at local government finance settlements, including for children’s services. To inform the review, the Department for Education and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government have jointly-commissioned a data research and collection project on cost and demand pressures for children’s services, to understand local authorities’ relative funding needs. We are working towards implementation in 2020-21, while keeping this date under review as our work progresses.</p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi grouped question UIN 166435 question first answered 25/07/2018 17:09:25 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	104 label Biography information for Crispin Blunt

944644

registered interest
date	19/07/2018
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	1
legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he has made a recent assessment of the capacity of Coventry City Council to discharge its statutory responsibilities to vulnerable children; and if he will make a statement.
tabling member constituency	Coventry South
tabling member printed	Mr Jim Cunningham
uin	166064
answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 24/07/2018 answer text <p>Formal assessment of local authority delivery of children’s social care is the responsibility of the independent inspectorate, Ofsted.</p><p> </p><p>Ofsted conducted a full inspection of Coventry City Council’s (CCC’s) children’s social care services in March 2017, and the subsequent report, published on 14 June 2017, found services to be ‘requires improvement’. This is an improvement from their previous inspection judgement in May 2014 which found them to be ‘inadequate’.</p><p> </p><p>Following the inspection in March 2017, consistent with government policy for councils that have previously failed an inspection but have now improved services, CCC were no longer formally in ‘intervention’. However, it was clear, as Ofsted reported, that the council still had more work to do to ensure all vulnerable children were receiving a good service.</p><p> </p><p>Since then, the department has continued to work with the council to monitor whether recent improvements are being sustained. CCC are now participating in a regional improvement alliance joining with other local councils in the region in a programme of supportive peer challenge to ensure services continue to improve and do not deteriorate back into being ‘inadequate’.</p><p> </p><p>Concerns about the functioning of a local authority’s children’s social care services should be reported to Ofsted.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Stratford-on-Avon answering member printed Nadhim Zahawi question first answered 24/07/2018 14:34:49 answering member 4113 label Biography information for Nadhim Zahawi
tabling member	308 label Biography information for Mr Jim Cunningham