Local Authority Children’s Services

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.

I applied for this debate because of a 10-year-old constituent who was abused, tortured and murdered by those who should have loved and protected her. Her name was Sara.

Sara was found dead in the early hours of 10 August 2023. Her body was covered in bruises. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones, and she had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them. The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell. Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years. Surrey county council is failing children left, right and centre.

Another example is what happened to my constituent Julia. She and her husband pleaded with Surrey county council for help with their daughter, Eloise, who had special educational needs. Surrey ignored those pleas and refused to give Eloise special educational needs and disabilities support, and eventually it took the parents to court because it was concerned that they were a safeguarding risk to their daughter. The court saw through that and sided with the parents. It said that it was Surrey’s lack of support for special educational needs that was failing the child, not the parents. Appallingly, Surrey tried to cover up its problems with special educational needs provision and push it on to a safeguarding failure.

Judith, another of my Woking constituents, was breaking up with her partner following many incidents of domestic and child abuse. She feared for her children’s safety if they continued to see their father. On the advice of Surrey county council, the family court gave the father visitation rights, and heartbreaking abuse followed. The court then took away the father’s right to see the children. That is why we need to end the presumption in favour of parental contact. Abusers should not care for their children. Surrey now insists that the father start seeing the children again. It says that it has a duty to explore whether contact would be safe by reintroducing the children to him. It looks like Surrey is rolling the dice and creating situations in which children can be harmed. This is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our services—the services for my most vulnerable constituents—are like.

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s children’s services turned up at the wrong house due to an administrative error. In another case, the council failed to show up to a promised meeting about a child’s care. As a result, the child did not get the support they needed—there are real-life consequences for Surrey’s incompetence.

In November 2025, the child safeguarding practice review that I called for into Sara’s murder was finally released, and it confirmed exactly what I feared: the state, and especially Surrey county council, failed Sara at every stage. All the warning signs were there, but they were not acted upon. The authorities were fully aware that Sara was at risk. She was placed on a child protection plan before her birth, yet was a victim of domestic abuse from that day onwards. Surrey social workers wanted to take her away from her father, but they changed their mind, and the consequences will haunt us all.

After Sara’s murder, the senior officer responsible for children’s services at Surrey county council, Rachael Wardell, was offered and accepted a pay rise of £8,700. I do not know how that woman can sleep at night. It sends a message that failure carries no consequences; in fact, it is rewarded.

The safeguarding review highlighted that there were national issues as well. Children’s services in one in five local authorities across the country are not good enough, according to Ofsted. There is a range of spending across local authorities. York spends £35 million and its children’s services are rated outstanding, but just down the road, Bradford—which, I admit, is slightly larger—spends £262 million and its children’s services are rated as inadequate.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is speaking about very serious issues, and I commend him for not apportioning blame to one side or the other; he understands that, in different circumstances, there are different reasons to blame. The Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services. In Somerset, for example, it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority, yet the funding uplift has been removed. Does he agree that that is a shocking way to treat our most remote authorities?

[Mr Forster]

I do. Funding is an issue; I am concerned that we are not properly resourcing our children’s services departments. The Government’s recent decision to shift funding away from rural constituencies like my hon. Friend’s could have a dramatic impact, and the Government need to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges. Obviously, a suburban-urban seat like mine has challenges, but it will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around than his.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an important speech on behalf of his most vulnerable constituents. Does he agree that rural and sparsely populated authorities can deliver good-quality children’s services only if special educational needs provision, health integration and transportation are treated as national responsibilities and not afterthoughts, as they so often are? On the funding piece, Westmorland and Furness council is receiving funding of £535 per head this year. In three years’ time, it will be £380 per head—a 29% cut in three years. Does he share my fear that that puts the safety of our children, particularly our most vulnerable ones, at risk?

[Mr Forster]

I completely agree, and that is why I called for this debate. We are not spending enough on vulnerable children, and that funding cut in Westmorland is absolutely shocking.

I highlighted the example of York and Bradford, which are two cities in the same region. We need to end the postcode lottery on the lives of children. Children should not be living with that abuse, neglect and fear, but in the awful situations where they are, we need local authority children’s services to have their back and step in to protect them.

Nowhere is that failure more despicable than in Conservative-run Surrey county council. My county council’s children’s services were rated good by Ofsted in March 2025—a decision that many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers. This “good” rating is clearly a thin veneer that covers up the rot within. Sixty-six local authorities in England are rated good. Based on what I know and what I have just said about Surrey, if that is good, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country? The Children’s Commissioner has been clear about this: her research shows huge regional disparities in child in need plans. In some areas, children receive early intervention and regular check-ups. In others, we see pointless bureaucracy, long waits and a revolving door of social workers who are poorly trained and supported.

Children’s services in local authorities cannot protect children because of significant loopholes in the home education system, as highlighted by Sara’s safeguarding review. It proved that Sara’s murderers used those loopholes to hide the abuse. When they could no longer hide the abuse from the school, Sara’s father and stepmother took her out of school, saying that they would homeschool her. The school could do nothing about that. The abuse continued—and there were tragic consequences.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a homeschool register to ensure that we know where the hundreds of homeschooled children across the country are and that they are safe. Some of them have never attended school—not once. We need a register of children not in school. That is backed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by the Children’s Commissioner, who have said that it would be an important step and tool to keep children safe.

Homeschooling can be hugely advantageous, and parents have a right to choose it, but we need a register and, above all, parents should lose the right to homeschool if there are safeguarding concerns. It is clear from Sara’s safeguarding review that repeated failures to share information are one of the key barriers to keeping children safe. The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning on this for years. We need to provide joined-up support to meet children’s needs. The mechanism is known as the single unique identifier, and it would help to ensure that there are no more appalling safeguarding cases like the ones I have highlighted.

Every area in our country needs to have a multi-agency safeguarding hub, so that all organisations can work together, share vital information and, above all, protect children. A key example of the need for that is Sara’s father and murderer. He was a taxi driver who passed a Disclosure and Barring Service check. He got his licence through Woking borough council—the licensing authority in my area—yet Surrey county council’s children’s services knew that he was a child abuser. It was foreseeable that he would be driving around children with special educational needs or other vulnerable people, including for Surrey county council, as it uses taxi drivers for home-to-school transport. Why are we risking vulnerable children’s lives because the computer says no? We need to share that information.

This Government’s recent spending review agreed a real-terms cut in the grant to local authorities for children’s services—that is appalling. We should not be cutting that funding; we should not be putting a price on a child’s life.

I have a number of asks to the Minister. We need better joined-up public services where information is shared quickly and effectively to prevent children from being put at risk. We need to ensure that local authorities are well equipped to deal with the upcoming changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, so that no child falls through the cracks. Does the Minister agree that something is clearly wrong in Surrey? I urge him to put Surrey county council’s children services in special measures.

I know that Surrey county council is to be abolished, and I am pleased that it is, but children’s lives are at risk now. We cannot wait for local government reorganisation. Surrey’s failures must have consequences for its leadership, not for my vulnerable constituents. From April of next year, my area will have a new local authority: West Surrey council. I do not want Surrey county council’s record of mismanagement and poor culture of serving the public to be transferred to the new local authority. That is why I urge the Minister to intervene to protect vulnerable children like Sara in Woking and across Surrey.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. Clearly, there are quite a few Members so, on the basis of what I have seen, I ask Members to speak for four to five minutes—an informal application of a time limit—and we will see how we get on.

09:44

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Western. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for representing his constituents so well in this debate, and in particular, given the horror story that he shared, I express my condolences to Sara’s family.

Colleagues may have heard York’s story, but those who have not are about to hear it. The hon. Member for Woking was right to say that York moved from the position of “requires improvement” to “outstanding” in one go. I have to point out to the Minister that our local authority has the lowest level of funding per capita after the fair funding review, which does not seem fair at all because we are not the most affluent place by far.

The catalyst for the change in York comes down to two people: Martin Kelly, the director of children’s services, and his deputy, Danielle Johnson. I pay tribute to them. If hon. Members want to learn about York’s journey and the outstanding achievements that have occurred, the director and his deputy are open to dialogue. At the heart of the change was a new practice model with a committed workforce. We moved from 45 agency staff to zero, on the basis that if someone was not committed to the service and the children, they had no place in the authority. A pioneering approach puts children at the heart, builds on co-production, innovates for change and evidences practice. Through reform, costs have been cut by £7 million. Through co-ordination across services, the local authority has built stability and made a difference to every child.

We are desperate to do more—to reshape services, drive change and press ahead with transformations. The model moves from transactional to relational, risk avoidance to risk management, safe certainty to safe uncertainty—that is just about being honest about risk—and short-term interventions to long-term outcomes. Every decision has the child at its centre and considers the long-term implications of each decision, developing resilience all the time. Its strength-based approach seeks out every opportunity for the child and is summed up,

“Our children belong in York, connected to the people they love and supported by the network around them.”

But the journey does not end there. A child or young person’s holistic needs should be met in one place, so here are my asks of the Minister. Mental health services must be integrated around the child, not separated in the child and adolescent mental health services, which is failing all our young people. We have a SEND hub in the city where all children can gather, along with parents and professionals, in an integrated way, but we need CAMHS as part of the conversation. That will remove the need for a diagnosis, because a label does not describe where a child is on multiple spectrums. We must have fully integrated support around a child’s needs.

We need to start young, so I urge the Minister to put the investment into the 1,001 critical days. We know that in the case of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, for instance, we need to ensure at the very start of life that we have got the right interventions around the parents, including during the nine months of pregnancy. We will then have a stronger opportunity to prevent care orders in future and ensure that there is appropriate antenatal care, as well as comprehensive support for the family.

We also need funding in York. I mentioned how low our funding is. We have eight areas in the lowest quintile of deprivation in our city. Everyone, including Ministers, talks about how York is a beautiful city, about the Vikings, and about the walls and the Minster, but that does not make a child safer. In fact, many of the children have never seen those assets, and many are struggling because we simply do not have the resources we need. When it comes to per capita funding, York is in the lowest 25 for schools and 23rd for higher needs funding. Our city needs more funding, because a child in York is worth as much as a child in Camden, and yet we have about a third of the funding to do things. More than that, we want to be able to push our model further, provide more services for parents and ensure that we can keep the family together, which is our objective as we seriously reduce the number of children in social care.

We also want to drive our model of good practice further, so that we can draw on the world’s best practice and bring it into York, particularly in the early years—those pre-school years—to support parents on their journey as well. We must work with a child’s developmental pathway, not against it. We therefore need to ensure that we have the right pedagogies in place. I was disappointed earlier in the week in the debate on play in education. To work with children we really need to understand the way that the mind develops.

My plea to the Minister is to look through a prism of poverty. We have significant areas of poverty in York, and yet if we put in the right investment, we know that we can make a difference to our children.

We are ambitious in York, and I am proud to showcase all that we have done, but we desperately want to go further. We know we can do it—in York, we have always been a laboratory of social change, a pioneering spirit built within all of us—and therefore I urge Government to work with us to deliver more not only of the Government’s objectives but of our own, for our children.

09:50

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. As of March 2025, nearly nine in 10 London councils were rated good or outstanding for children’s services. By contrast, in the south-west of England, the figure is barely half that.

Children’s services in Devon have faced serious challenges over recent years and in May 2025, Ofsted’s full inspection of Devon county council’s children’s services judged the service to be inadequate overall. That means that too many children experiencing neglect or abuse did not receive timely or effective help, too many plans drifted, and too many care leavers did not get consistent support.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) and I agree with almost all of what he said. For me, I want to make it plain that I would not criticise the people working in children’s services, because I feel that individual social workers are a bit like goalkeepers: all too often, rather than praising their work for the children they save, we condemn and lambast the individuals who have cases where things go wrong. Yes, there is failure, and yes, there are real errors of judgment at the local authority level, but my sense is that the fault and the blame—indeed, the sin that my hon. Friend points to—lie with the perpetrators.

Devon’s position is serious, but it is not static. In formal correspondence with Devon county council in December 2025, the Minister for Children and Families set out the Government’s position on the progress being made in improving children’s services in Devon. He explicitly noted the “improving picture” and the

“increasing evidence of improvement to social work practice”,

linked to stronger prioritisation and support from corporate and political leadership. He also pointed to Ofsted’s recent monitoring work, which recognised that

“the range and impact of support provided to care leavers in Devon has improved since the last inspection.”

I appreciate that the Minister said that from a place of caring deeply for children’s services, not just as a political leader, but as someone who has been a leader in this sector for well over a decade.

Workforce instability in children’s services in Devon, especially the high use of agency staff, has held the service back. Reports in 2023 show that about 50% of children’s social work posts were filled by agency staff, compared with the national average of about 18%. In Devon, a permanent children’s social worker costs roughly £23 per hour, while agency staff cost about £44 per hour. Closing that gap and reducing the reliance on agency staff is clearly urgent.

Devon has taken measurable steps in the past year to build stability in children’s services and to reduce reliance on agency staff. According to Devon county council’s latest People First strategy, the number of agency team managers has been cut by about 40% from 20 to 12 as of last April, improving leadership within frontline teams. Devon’s assessed and supported year in employment programme for newly qualified social workers, and the county council social care academy, continue to recruit and support newly qualified social workers, with roles actively advertised throughout 2025 and tailored development pathways to encourage permanent careers in the county, rather than the short-term contracts that we have seen before.

I will now talk about residential care.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Somerset council tells me that providers of residential homes for children in care can charge as much as £8,000 to £15,000 per week for one child, because they know that the council will have no other choice. Somerset council, however, is making good progress with its non-profit Homes and Horizons partnership. Does my hon. Friend agree that, to tackle profiteering companies, councils need more support to disrupt the market that provides residential homes?

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. His situation is similar to ours: in Devon, it is reckoned that those profiteering companies make a complete packet. Local Government Association analysis suggests that 20 of the largest independent children’s social care providers in England took in about £1.6 billion in fees in 2021-22. Roughly 19% of that—about £310 million—was recorded as profit. Plainly, there is too much money leaving this sector and not doing the right thing for children.

Devon’s children’s services are improving, but Devon’s children deserve services that are not just improving but consistently good, and moving towards outstanding.

[Matt Western (in the Chair)]

The four to five minutes was not kept to as tightly as I would have hoped, so we will have to go to a formal four minutes for speeches because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak.

09:55

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I commend the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for the compassionate way that he spoke, and the dignity that he brought to Sara’s memory. When we have to speak about horrific cases in this place, it can go one of two ways, and I think that he did justice to the young woman today.

Stoke-on-Trent city council is often at the top of league tables that councils would wish to be at the bottom of, and at the bottom of league tables that they would wish to be at the top of. That is a structural failing that we have had for many years, and our children’s services are no different. Although they were rated inadequate in 2019, they now require improvement to be good, and that is partly because of the leadership that has been shown since the 2013 local elections. It is normally us and Hartlepool that are No. 1 in terms of the number of children in care as an absolute number, but also per capita—per 10,000. It is a financial drain on our council, which the Minister has been made aware of, not least because I have told him.

This year, one in three pounds that the council spends will be spent on children’s services. Compared with our statistical neighbours, 1,086 children in care is a phenomenally large number. It is an anomaly that we cannot get to the bottom of. At this point, I want to commend the work of our chief executive at the council, Jon Rouse, who has worked nationally on these issues and has deployed as many techniques as we can muster to get that number down, but it has remained stubbornly high. It fluctuates around 1,000, but that just means that we are spending millions of pounds on children in care at a time when money is tight.

The Government have helped; since the 2023-34 budget—if the Government sign off on this year’s request—the council will have received around £70 million of exceptional financial support to balance the budget, to deal with the overspend driven exclusively by the demand in children’s services. We cannot work out why so many young people are being put into the care system. Our city does have poverty—a lot of places have poverty—and social capital is not high. We are not that dissimilar to our statistical neighbours, and yet our numbers are significant and not coming down at the rate that we want.

The Minister is not immune to the challenges that places such as Stoke face. He knows that there have been complex issues with small local authorities in densely populated urban areas where there are underlying socioeconomic factors, but that should not be a reason to accept these high numbers. It is bad for the city, but also for the young people in care; we all know that care-experienced young people tend to have lower social capital and lower opportunities, and their life chances are disproportionately impacted by the fact that they go into care. We need to work out a solution to that.

I have raised my asks to the Minister privately, but I want to put them on the record today. Can we look at a rigorous partnership working board for Stoke-on-Trent that brings together Government, local authorities and the expertise we have heard about from Members today, to get to the root cause of the problem in Stoke-on-Trent? I will be taking up the offer from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) to speak to her officials about how they have made their remarkable progress, because if we can learn from that, we absolutely will.

Are the Government willing to look at a rigorous, potentially academic-led investigation into the drivers of social care need in Stoke-on-Trent, so that we can get to the cause, as well as the solution? Can we talk about Ofsted? The city council was doing remarkably well, and then the Ofsted judgment came in and said that we were managing too much risk, so we instantly had to go back to a risk-averse situation that has driven those numbers up. Those are my three asks, and I thank Members for their time and attention.

09:59

[Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate. He made a powerful speech on behalf of his vulnerable constituents, and vulnerable people across the county of Surrey and beyond.

The central failing I want to highlight is this: Surrey county council—my constituency’s local authority for children’s services—repeatedly chooses not to use its statutory powers even when children are unsafe, out of education or legally entitled to support. Children and families across Guildford are feeling the consequences. Schools are often the first to spot safeguarding concerns. Headteachers and designated safeguarding leads do not raise alarms lightly. They do so because they are often the only professionals with consistent daily insight into a child’s wellbeing.

At a meeting last year, a headteacher told us that safeguarding thresholds in Surrey are far higher than in comparable authorities. Referrals stall and the council is reluctant to move from voluntary support to formal safeguarding processes. That is often justified by the family resilience model. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a strengths-based approach, but the issue is how it is applied.

One headteacher at the meeting described, with visible emotion, a child in her school showing clear signs of neglect and abuse. The headteacher followed safeguarding procedures and referred the case to Surrey but, instead of investigating, the council informed the parents that a safeguarding concern had been raised and the parents removed the child from the school. That headteacher told us that she lies awake at night not knowing where that child is or whether they are safe. That is not an isolated incident. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking referred to Sara Sharif, the most tragic example in Surrey.

Those safeguarding failures are deeply linked to failures in education. In an example from my constituency, a looked-after child is approaching a critical educational transition, but approval for an appropriate placement has been delayed because that child is in temporary accommodation outside Surrey due to a shortage of placements. Despite Surrey being the corporate parent, it treated geography as a barrier rather adapting the system. There are many other examples I could share.

I have several questions for the Minister but, given the time, I will write to him. Today, I simply want to ask whether he will commit to reviewing whether Surrey county council is meeting its statutory safeguarding educational duties, particularly in relation to thresholds for intervention. Children in Surrey need a system that acts without hesitation when their safety, welfare or education is at risk. I urge the Government to do all they can to ensure Surrey county council meets its legal responsibilities. I fully support my hon. Friend the Member for Woking’s call for the Government to intervene in Surrey to keep children safe.

10:02

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for making a powerful speech.

As a foster carer, a member of an adoption panel and a former lead member of a tier 1 local authority, I have seen at first hand the damage that austerity has caused to local authorities across the country, in particular to children’s services. The lack of resource and support has contributed to the number of children in care rocketing. That in turn has created a placement sufficiency crisis in children’s social care. The number of children in residential care more than doubled between 2010 and 2024. That has presented extra pressures on authorities, as children have to be routinely placed at a distance from their local area. Every day that the previous Government were in power, an average of 140 children—equivalent to nearly five full classrooms—entered poverty.

We now have a Minister for Children and Families who understands the problems we face, as he delivered the independent review of children’s social care. I will focus on some of the changes Labour has made to improve children’s services thus far. First, the continued roll-out of the Mockingbird programme, which brings new foster carers together with those who are more experienced, helping to create an extended family-like community around foster families, providing advice, expertise and support.

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a group of foster carers about their experiences. Many told me of the positive impact the Mockingbird scheme had had on them. Therefore, I welcome the additional £40 million that the Government are investing in children’s social care, which is helping to ensure that programmes such as Mockingbird continue to be rolled out across the country. If we cannot attract enough new foster carers—and that is always a challenge—then we need to keep hold of and support the ones we have.

Secondly, the Government are bringing in important changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that will protect local authorities from paying exorbitant fees to large, privately run children’s home providers. As I have said previously, many more children are living in residential care due to the placement sufficiency crisis. As has been mentioned this morning, in 2022 the largest 20 providers of children’s residential placements collectively made £310 million in profits. That was all off the back of the public purse. It is therefore welcome that, as a result of the Bill, large children’s placement providers will have to give regular financial information to a newly created financial oversight scheme. I am glad that the Bill will give the Government the power, if necessary, to cap the profits of private children’s home providers.

There are many other positive changes to highlight, including those ensuring greater oversight on home schooling for children subject to a child protection order. The roll-out of the Staying Close programme will give care leavers from residential care—the number of whom has grown significantly—extra support to stay in housing and to get education and work. New requirements will ensure that all local authorities offer family group decision making—a move that will keep more children out of care altogether, and which in turn will save authorities money. We are opening new Best Start family hubs in all English local authorities—something that we have really missed.

Taken together, the changes will alleviate pressures on local authority children’s services and give greater protection to our children and greater support to carers. It will, of course, take time for many of these changes to be felt. However, having been on the frontlines of children’s social care for more than two decades, I know that these changes will make a real and tangible difference to our most vulnerable and at-risk children.

15:33

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and for his passionate and heartfelt speech.

I want to begin by acknowledging that Kirklees council has improved significantly since previous inspections. The most recent inspection in 2024 judged it as good overall for children’s services, and it has been allocated extra funding in 2026-27 to try and address some of the findings. However, the message to the Government is that the councils that have done all they can to get from requires improvement to good need extra support in funding and resources to then go and push further to get to outstanding.

Today, I want to focus on one area that may not otherwise be raised. We have heard that the pressures on local authorities are intense and growing. In Dewsbury and Batley, around 300 children are being raised in kinship care—cared for by grandparents, aunts, uncles or close friends who step in during moments of crisis. Alongside that, over 100 children are currently in local authority care in Kirklees. Importantly, Kirklees has lower numbers of looked after children than many of our neighbouring councils, reflecting long-standing preventive approaches and sustained investment in early help and family support.

We also have a higher proportion of children able to remain with their extended families, with greater use of special guardianship orders, which we know significantly improve outcomes for children. Kinship carers in particular provide a vital service in offering continuity, familiarity and love at a time of upheaval. Yet too often, they do so with insufficient support. Across Yorkshire and Humber, almost half of kinship carers rate the support they receive from local authorities as poor or very poor. Alarmingly, 12% say they may not be able to continue caring for their kinship children in the next year if circumstances do not improve. That will put almost 2,000 children at risk of entering formal care in Yorkshire and Humber. That is not just a human tragedy, but also a financial one.

Evidence shows that, for every 100 children supported in well-resourced kinship care rather than local authority care, the state saves £4 million a year, while improving long-term outcomes for those children. Nationally, children’s social care reforms are widely welcomed and have been shaped by the expertise of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. The renewed focus on multi-agency family support, early intervention and prevention is particularly welcome.

The proposed investment, through the Families First Partnership programme and wider reforms, has the potential to make a real difference, strengthening our ability to help families stay together where safe, deploy evidence-based interventions and deliver high-quality social care. But reform must be matched with sustained funding and genuine cross-Government co-ordination alongside real, sustained support on the ground. That means investing in early intervention, strengthening kinship care support, improving placement sufficiency and ensuring joined-up working across services.

My final point to the Minister is that, in the first year of being an MP, I raised the automatic off-rolling of children after 20 days of absence without authorisation. That really needs to be looked at—there needs to be a formal meeting and a review of why that child was out before just off-rolling them, because that can create safeguarding issues.

10:11

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. I congratulate the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on securing the debate, telling Sara’s story so powerfully and allowing us the space to discuss one of our most important public services.

First, I pay tribute to everyone who works in children’s services across our country, but particularly in my two local authorities of Middlesbrough and Redcar and Cleveland. Before entering this place, I was privileged to be the cabinet member for children in Redcar and Cleveland. I was impressed, every single day, by the extraordinary staff working in that department—under immense pressure, as has been discussed. I often used to say that the toddlers who lost early intervention services in the first wave of austerity were now teenagers coming into care with complex challenges, and I think we are still seeing that today.

I want to highlight the most recent Ofsted inspection in Redcar and Cleveland, which was published just this morning. In 2022, the department was rated as requiring improvement across all areas, and it was a top priority for the Labour council that came in in 2023 to turn that around. I was proud of Ofsted’s recognition of the work we were doing on that front in 2023 and, today, I am very pleased to see that Ofsted have rated Redcar and Cleveland as good, with strong practice and swift support for children and families. That is a big step forward, and a real credit to all the staff, the directors—previously Kathryn Boulton, and her successor Danielle Swainston—and the cabinet member responsible, councillor Bill Suthers. His leadership has been steady and co-operative, and he deserves recognition for that. It is obviously not the end of the journey, but it is a very important milestone in making sure that we serve the children we all have a duty towards.

That is especially welcome given the challenging context that councils face, which we have discussed today. The Institute for Government recently found that nearly every local authority is overspending on children’s social care, largely because placements with private care providers have become much more expensive. It has been described by the Competition and Markets Authority as a “broken” market, and it needs addressing. Private providers extract high margins while councils raid reserves and increase council tax, disproportionately in areas of high deprivation, just to keep children safe. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) mentioned Hartlepool; across the Tees Valley we have a cluster of local authorities under extraordinary pressure in this area, and no one in this Chamber thinks that that is a sensible way to run such an important public service.

There are answers; I welcome the new grant funding, the Best Start family hubs and the Families First Partnership programme. Important changes are coming forward from the Government, but we can do more to disrupt that broken market. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has given the Department powers to act. We can cap private providers’ profits and set up regional care co-operatives, as recommended by the MacAlister review—which the Minister, as its author, is very well acquainted with. That can improve commissioning and increase in-house and not-for-profit provision. In the Tees Valley, council leaders are exploring that idea together, to stop competing with each other, pool our buying power and shape a more stable local market to get better value for children and taxpayers.

I am convinced that this is a necessary step in our region, and it sits alongside work on prevention, family help and a more stable workforce. I hope that we can look at this. With the right national framework, the right investment and the confidence to try new models, we can build a children’s social care system that is stable, compassionate and worthy of the young people it serves.

10:19

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western, for what I think is the third time in three days—I feel very blessed. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) on securing this important debate, on his incredibly moving speech and on all his hard work and advocacy in this area. Woking is extremely lucky to have somebody fighting its corner as he does.

Too many families in rural areas face a system that they feel is too distant, too fragmented and increasingly under strain. Local authorities’ budgets are under immense pressure, particularly in rural areas, where delivering support is inherently more expensive. Delivering children’s services in rural areas costs more, sustainable buildings are harder to find, connectivity is weaker and long distances make everything from early intervention to crisis support more complex and expensive.

The funding formulas rarely account for those challenges. Per child expenditure varies hugely between authorities, with some spending three and a half times more per child than other areas. I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest £500 million to rebuild family services under the Best Start umbrella and the creation of Best Start family hubs, but children in rural constituencies like West Dorset need safe, accessible family spaces for children’s services to take place. Local authorities should be empowered to retrofit vacant buildings, such as the stationmaster’s house at Sherborne station, into family hubs that meet local needs, rather than centralised services that can be miles away.

I also welcome the extension of the adoption and special guardianship support fund into 2026-27, but short-term extensions are not enough. Children with complex needs cannot thrive without the certainty of long-term therapeutic support. The Koru Project, a local charity providing vital support in Dorset, warns that without long-term funding, children cannot receive the care they need. It has shared heartbreaking cases: a young girl in her fourth care placement who relies on her therapist as her only stable relationship; and another child, with severe additional needs, who sees therapy as her only safe space.

Professionals agree that, in complex cases, long-term Government support is vital. One constituent, Brenda, is a blind adopter raising a teenager with FASD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and developmental trauma. Specialist therapy funded through the scheme has helped her daughter to regulate her emotions and engage with her education, health and care plan. Kate and Dave, who care for two children with overlapping needs, face constant anxiety because, although assessments can be funded, the ongoing therapy that professionals say is essential cannot.

Local authorities must have stable, predictable funding and proper support and guidance from central Government to meet those challenges. That means recognising rurality in the funding formula, ending short-term fixes and ensuring that access to services does not depend on a postcode. Children in West Dorset and in rural communities across the country deserve services that are stable, accessible and fair.

10:17

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western.

For obvious reasons, we often hear in this House about failure, notably in the tragic case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster)—I congratulate him on securing this important debate—but I will focus on a local authority that has been able to turn its children’s services around. In 2017, a BBC report warned that children in Powys were being put at risk because of serious failings in the council’s children’s services. Inspectors found missed safeguarding opportunities, weak oversight and poor follow-up—concerns so serious that Welsh Government intervention was actively discussed.

That history matters, because it gives context to the progress that is now being made. Since 2022, under Liberal Democrat leadership of Powys county council, there has been a focus on rebuilding children’s services from the ground up—strengthening leadership, supporting the workforce and putting children’s safety back at the centre of decision making.

That work is now being recognised independently. A recent external assurance review concluded that Powys children’s services are safe and improving, with no serious failings identified. The reviewer specifically highlighted stable leadership, strong advocacy for children through independent reviewing officers, and high-quality performance reporting—precisely those areas that were found wanting in 2017. Staff report feeling supported and proud to work in the service, and Powys social workers and safeguarding professionals have been recognised at regional awards for their work protecting children and involving young people directly in shaping services.

No one is pretending that the job is finished. Pressures remain, particularly around funding and placements, but the direction of travel is clear and welcome. Powys has moved from a service once described as putting children at risk to one independently judged to be safe and improving. That is what sustained leadership looks like, and it is a positive example that this House should be willing to recognise.

The overlying point is that vulnerable children need a strong state to look after them, and functioning children’s services that keep them safe are essential. That is why I hold the Conservatives and Reform in complete contempt, because they do not believe in our state. They have spent the last 40 years bashing and cutting the state; they attack it over and over again, spreading their cynical poison that a small state is desirable. Well, a small state will end up endangering our nation’s children. It is essential that these services are funded properly and well to keep our children safe. That is why I am proud to be a Liberal Democrat, and I am proud of what Powys county council has achieved over the past few years.

10:21

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for setting the scene incredibly well. Our children’s services are so important, and the story he told has been well illustrated in the papers. It is almost inconceivable how that young child went through such brutality and violence. The story moved us all, and I thank him for sharing it with this Chamber; it is important for what we need to achieve. It could have been prevented, which is why this issue is incredibly important.

Local children’s services are essential to support, protect and improve the wellbeing of children, young people and families before any minor or moderate problems escalate into crisis situations. The early help approach has important benefits for parents and the community. I always try to give a Northern Ireland perspective to debates. I am mindful that the Minister does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I like to add some comments to illustrate the problems we have and some of the helpful things we are doing. I will try to be on the positive side.

In Northern Ireland, and especially in my Strangford constituency, numerous services go above and beyond at all levels to serve children. The Ards Arena youth resource centre provides activities for confidence building, peer interaction and safe community engagement. There is also multi-agency support through the Children and Young People’s Strategic Partnership, which brings together statutory, voluntary and community organisations to improve outcomes for children and families.

That is not to mention the Newtownards child social services team based in James Street in the town centre of Newtownards, the major town of my constituency. I know many of the staff personally, and the contribution they make to the lives of young people does not go unnoticed. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) referred to staff and what they do. It is important that we remember the many staff members who make fantastic contributions, and their focus must be on the perpetrators, as he rightly said, to ensure that issues are addressed.

As of 31 March last year, 22,243 children were known to social services as a child in need, which means they are assessed as requiring services to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of health or development, or to prevent significant impairment. The pressure on local children’s services is intense, and support can range from marital break-ups to missing children and children with deteriorating mental health, or even children who have had to be removed from the family home. Some of those are desperate cases that certainly worry us.

Protecting children’s wellbeing and ensuring the necessary support is there before a crisis is critical to ensuring that young people feel safe and do not reach a point where they require an emergency service. We must strengthen families and provide services to keep young people’s lives stable. Research suggests that preventive services, community youth centres and support programmes improve health, education and social outcomes, so let us do our bit to ensure that those services are sustainable and fit for purpose.

Local support and children’s services play a proactive role in ensuring that children in my constituency and across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can thrive. Modern society and social issues can be hard enough for young people to navigate. The pressures on young children and families are incredible, so we must ensure they have the support they need. I want to do that, other right hon. and hon. Members want to do that, and I know the Minister wants to do it too.

I look to the Minister for a commitment to children’s services across the United Kingdom. Perhaps he can have some discussions with the Northern Ireland Assembly to see how we can do things better together.

10:25

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate and for his tireless dedication to ensuring that what happened to Sara Sharif never, ever happens to another child again.

We have heard a range of contributions today, and I want to start by saying that children’s services in local authorities across the country play a vital, statutory role in ensuring that all children, including the most vulnerable, receive the support and education that every child deserves and needs. Like the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) and my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), I pay tribute to those working on the frontline, who are often overworked, underpaid and under-thanked. They deserve our thanks, notwithstanding the systemic and structural failures.

As many hon. Members said, many local authorities face deep funding challenges. For some local authorities, that is exacerbated by what has been called the fair funding review. I fear we will see short-term decisions that ultimately cost the taxpayer more in the long run. The Liberal Democrats have always argued that we should see spending on supporting our children as an investment in our future—our society’s future and our economy’s future.

I will return to funding, but I now turn to where my hon. Friend the Member for Woking started. I listened to his powerful words about Sara’s story with tears in my eyes, and I was reminded that I felt similarly in May 2022, when the then Education Secretary—one Nadhim Zahawi—gave a statement in the main Chamber following the brutal deaths of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes. As is always the case after such horrendous stories, we said, “Never again,” and he promised that lessons would be learned.

When the Children’s Commissioner gave evidence to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Committee last year, she said:

“Every time a child dies, we give exactly the same set of recommendations, including better multi-agency working and better join-up, yet time and again”—

including after Victoria Climbié, Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Sara Sharif—

“we find ourselves saying the same things.”—[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 44, Q94.]

The Government must take action, and I welcome the fact that they are taking a number of steps in the right direction—I am very happy to acknowledge that. Last year, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) and I met Professor Alexis Jay to discuss the findings of her review into child sexual abuse. She impressed upon me two points: the importance of a child protection authority and the importance of data sharing.

I am grateful that the Minister has now announced a child protection authority, and I hope he will set out a bit more on the timelines and implementation. On data sharing, which was so critical in Sara’s case, I welcome some of the measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, not least the introduction of a single unique identifier. The Liberal Democrats strongly support that because we believe that proper data sharing between services will improve child safeguarding. I hope the Government will continue to address some of the concerns that have been raised about privacy and data sharing, given the Government’s record at times of data loss and being hacked. I raised with the Home Secretary a few weeks ago my fear that there are people outside this place who are scaremongering and suggesting that this is digital ID for children, when actually it is about how we safeguard children, provide better services, and commission better services and research to support them.

Another measure in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the other place, is the children not in school register. As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, the Liberal Democrats have long supported such a register, so that vulnerable children do not disappear from the system. However, during the passage of the Bill we have repeatedly set out our concerns about the amount of information that has to be collected for that register. This is not just about the impact and intrusion on families; even the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, in oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee, was circumspect about the amount of detailed information that home-educating parents will be expected to supply. I have talked to councillors and local government officials, and they are worried about the huge burden this will put on local authorities in meeting their new duties. If the Government are going to put these duties on local authorities, funding needs to follow, so that they are properly resourced to collect the data and implement the register.

That brings me back to funding. As we have heard, underfunding is a consistent theme in children’s services. I talked about children being an investment. Unfortunately, politics is such that Governments think in electoral cycles. The return on an investment in a young child is often not seen for 15 or 20 years, so it is very hard to make the case for that investment to the Treasury. The Minister has my sympathy and support in that.

In his independent review of children’s social care, the Minister said:

“What we have currently is a system increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

I recognise that the Government announced a children’s social care prevention grant last year, but I am afraid that money pales into insignificance when we hear so starkly today from my hon. Friends, many of whom represent rural constituencies that are seeing deep funding cuts through the reallocation of local government funding following the fair funding review, that the most vulnerable will lose out.

It is not just rural areas, but London constituencies, too. Government Members often say to me, “You represent an affluent area.” Yes, on the whole I do, but that does not mean that deprivation, need and vulnerable children do not exist. My local authority in Richmond is one of the worst hit in the country—it will lose about £47 million of Government funding over the next four years—and it is those vulnerable children who will miss out. The pots of funding the Government are making available for children’s services are welcome, but when we offset that against the losses, we are going to see children suffer. It is a real shame that we are seeing this money taken away in London, because between 2010 and 2023, London boroughs saw an 11% reduction in the number of looked-after children, while England as a whole experienced a 30% increase. The changes to the children and young people’s services formula in London risk undoing the very good work we have seen London boroughs do to give our children the best start in life.

Obviously, I will always argue for more money to be spent on children’s services, but I recognise that there is not a magic money tree, and we face a difficult fiscal situation, not least as a result of the previous Conservative Government. There are ways that savings can be made. Early intervention is one of them, and I know the Minister is very supportive of that approach. There are a number of great measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, such as family group decision making. I ask the Minister to look at the amendments tabled in the other place by my noble Friend Baroness Tyler, who wants to ensure that local authorities have a duty to support parents after a child is taken away from them, so that they not only overcome the trauma and grief but make a lasting change. The data shows that half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child. We need to take action early to prevent the same thing from happening again.

A number of Labour and Liberal Democrat Members have talked about the eye-watering cost of private social care providers and fostering agencies, which are bleeding local authorities dry. I welcome the backstop power in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill for the Government to put a profit cap on children’s social care providers. I urge the Minister, as I have again and again: please extend the profit cap to private special schools, which are also bleeding our local authorities dry. When one school charges more than £100,000 a year in fees plus transport, while state-maintained alternatives do it for £25,000 for the same cohort, that is an obvious place that the Government can save money. The answer is capital investment in state-run specialist provision, in the same way that it is in state-run children’s care homes. I know the Government have already started on that, but they need to go further.

[Edward Morello]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful point. It reminds me of a conversation I had recently with my council about a group of 10 to 15 parents with autistic children who definitely did not need to be in specialist schools and needed local provision. Because of the different pots of money, it was easier for the council to pay a private provider £100,000 and have the children travel 20 to 30 miles, because it could not afford the capital cost of £1.5 million to set up a local school. It wanted to do that, but it did not have the money, which disadvantages parents who now have kids travelling vast distances.

[Munira Wilson]

It is a familiar story, and I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I am getting an indication from the Chair that I am already overrunning, so I will try to cut my last points short. The Minister is aware that I have long campaigned on kinship care. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill takes welcome steps forward, but there is much further to go. As he knows, putting a child with a family member in the short term is not just better for their long-term outcomes; it would save local authorities around 50% of the cost of putting them in care, even if they gave kinship carers allowances on a par with foster carers. That has to be an urgent cost-saving intervention. The Minister must also restore the adoption and special guardianship support fund grants, as we heard so clearly from my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), who talked about the long-term impact.

I will conclude by quoting the Minister’s own words at him. In his review, he stated:

“How we care for our children is nothing short of a reflection of our values as a country.”

We have heard today that we are falling short on that. We stand ready to work across parties to ensure that his vision becomes reality.

10:36

[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate, and for his powerful and thoughtful contribution, particularly in relation to the tragic case of Sara Sharif.

We have heard thoughtful contributions from right across the House this morning. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke passionately about her city, about sharing best practice and about the importance of the first 1,001 days of a child’s life, which are critical. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) talked about the variation in children’s services around the country and how it is a postcode lottery, and in particular about the difference between London and the south-west. It is heartening to hear that services in his Devon constituency are improving.

There were calls for joined-up thinking from right across the House, led by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) supported the hon. Member for Woking by raising concerns on behalf of her constituents regarding the quality of care from Surrey county council. I was particularly moved by the personal commitment to looked-after children by the hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), who brought his experience to bear.

Themes we have heard from right across the House include support for kinship carers, the need for long-term funding, the lack of places, and the fact that we need processes in order to learn the vital lessons of the past. I associate His Majesty’s loyal Opposition with those themes and, in particular, with Members’ tributes to frontline staff. There may be systemic issues, but we know that frontline staff do their best under difficult constraints. They are overworked and underpaid, and deserve all of our support.

I think the nature of need in the country is shocking. Local authorities in England are supporting around 400,000 children in need. That is roughly one in 30 children. As of the end of March last year, around 49,000 children were subject to child protection plans, and more than 80,000 were in local authority care. Those figures should give us pause; one in 30 children is the equivalent of a child in every classroom. But this debate is not about numbers; it is about children—the most vulnerable, at-risk children in our communities. It is not about statistics, but about lives—and, in the case of Sara Sharif, a life lost.

Sara was living in Woking when she was murdered by her father and stepmother. The hon. Member for Woking has rightly been a passionate advocate for change, particularly since the publication of the local child safeguarding practice review. I commend him for that work. Nine of the 15 recommendations in the review were wholly or partially local, and I echo the call for Surrey county council to implement them swiftly but thoroughly. It is our responsibility in this place to ensure that where national recommendations are made, children’s services are properly equipped to meet their statutory duties. I welcome the work that has begun, but there is more to do.

Nationally, the scale of pressures on children’s services is clear. According to the Local Government Association, the number of children in care is 18% higher than a decade ago. Councils now carry out more than 600 child protection investigations every single day. But despite increased budgeted spending, councils have been overspending on children’s social care by an average of 14% each year, and planned budgets for 2025-26 show a further 10% rise in costs. At the heart of this lies a fundamental problem: a shortage of high-quality placements for looked-after children. Demand continues to outstrip supply, driving up costs and putting intense pressure on social care, SEND services and care leaver support.

Under the previous Conservative Government, the proportion of local authority children’s services rated good or outstanding rose from 24% in 2015 to 60% in 2024, according to the Institute for Government. That progress matters, but it is equally true that around a third of local authorities still require improvement or are judged inadequate. This is about children’s safety. Having listened to hon. Members from across the political spectrum, I hope I speak for many in saying that we all want the Government to succeed in this area. Getting children’s services right underpins so many outcomes and, most importantly, helps prevent tragedies like Sara’s from ever happening again.

The hon. Member for Woking may know that part of my constituency is in the Surrey county council area. The council has committed to implementing all the local recommendations in full. I share some of his concerns about the culture in that team and the need for joined-up services, so that children do not fall between the cracks. Encouragingly, Ofsted’s most recent inspection, in 2025, highlighted some improvements at the front door of services. Inspectors noted that referrals to the children’s single point of access received “timely and proportionate” responses, and that there was effective partnership working with the police, particularly in cases of domestic abuse and missing children. Multi-agency strategy meetings were found to be “timely and well attended” leading to considered decisions. Those are vital steps forward and I welcome them.

I have met the new lead member, Councillor Jonathan Hulley, to discuss this matter. I have a great deal of personal confidence in him, and he recognises the scale of change required in this area. I was heartened to see that a motion calling for an independent expert review of the improvements made at Surrey county council following Sara’s death was passed unanimously by the council last month, with cross-party support. That independent scrutiny is essential to providing confidence that reforms are effective, lasting and properly focused. I will be watching closely for its outcomes, as I know the hon. Member for Woking will be, and I hope that we can all embrace the cross-party approach of our county colleagues across Surrey and within the council to drive sustained improvement.

As well as Surrey, in my constituency I also deal with children’s services delivered by the royal borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and by Slough borough council—I do not know whether I am unique in having three different children’s services. Ofsted rated the royal borough’s services as good in October 2024. By contrast, Slough has been inadequate since early 2023, although subsequent focus visits, including in July 2024, found that children in need and those on child protection plans were receiving timely and appropriate services.

These neighbouring authorities illustrate a simple but uncomfortable truth: children’s services remain a postcode lottery. Where services are well led, outcomes can and do improve under the existing framework; where they struggle, the causes are often leadership, capability and delivery on the ground, not the absence of legislative powers. That is why we should be careful and cautious about assuming that more legislation on its own will necessarily lead to better outcomes for children.

I wish to talk briefly about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which continues its passage in the other place. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of several amendments responding to the recommendations from the Sara Sharif review, particularly proposals to pilot meetings with parents before deregistration from school, and the option of a visit within 15 days of a child starting home education. However, there remain serious concerns. As drafted, the Bill would not fully address the specific safeguarding loopholes identified in Sara’s case. Baroness Barran is doing excellent work in the Lords to close those gaps, and I hope that the Government will think again on some of those issues. I welcome the Government’s introduction of unique child identification, as we previously called for. More broadly, the principle of a register of children not in school, as raised by the hon. Member for Woking, has long enjoyed cross-party support. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that.

Education matters and school attendance should be the norm, but parental choice also matters. Elective home education is a legitimate option for many families. As it stands, the Bill does not strike the right balance. I have received numerous representations from constituents concerned that the proposals would place excessive and unnecessary burdens on responsible home-educating families. The requirement to detail exact hours of education, on pain of breaking the law, is particularly intrusive and fails to reflect the reality of flexible home-based learning. Safeguarding measures must be proportionate and focused on identifying genuine risk, not on creating layers of bureaucracy that stigmatise families who are doing the right thing.

I urge the Government to go further in tightening the conditions under which a local authority may withhold consent for elective home education. Government amendment 120 to the Bill, which would apply where a child has been on a child protection plan within the past five years, does not go far enough. Local authorities should also consider whether a child has ever been subject to care proceedings, even where those proceedings did not result in a care order, as tragically was the case with Sara.

If the Bill is to honour its stated purpose, it must focus relentlessly on protecting children at genuine risk, not on sweeping up responsible families into an overly prescriptive system. Getting this right matters; as we have heard today, children’s lives depend on it.

10:46

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing the debate and for his powerful and heartfelt contribution. I have met him on a number of occasions, and I am sure we will continue to meet to discuss these and other related issues.

I express my own deep sorrow at the tragic death of Sara Sharif. By all accounts, Sara was a bright happy girl who should have gone on to enjoy all the things in life she had ahead of her. Instead, her life was brought to a brutal and painful end by the actions of her father and stepmother. In such circumstances, it is small comfort to know that those directly responsible for Sara’s death have been brought to justice and will spend most of the rest of their lives in prison. I pay tribute to all who gave evidence that ultimately proved beyond doubt that her death was the result of lengthy and increasingly sadistic abuse.

We in this place must also reflect on the fact that, as set out in the local child safeguarding practice review, there were opportunities where Sara’s appalling mistreatment could have been identified and stopped. I have already committed to write to the hon. Member for Woking, setting out the Government’s full range of actions in direct response to the recommendations of the LCSPR.

I will take a moment to recognise the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly praised the fantastic work of Martin Kelly and his team in turning around services in York, beyond simply looking at the Ofsted inspection results. The transformational change for children and families in that city is down to that team’s brilliant work. My hon. Friend also rightly identified the concept of safe uncertainty. As we have heard, we are trying to legislate for and resource a system that needs to act decisively when there is significant harm, and support families where there is not significant harm, but there are concerns. Getting that balance right requires practitioners to occupy a very difficult position of safe uncertainty: not knowing, but holding competing hypotheses and ideas in mind about what might be going on for a family, and doing so in a calm, methodical and skilled way.

The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) made a point about social work judgment, which neatly summarised that reflection. Devon’s performance is an ongoing concern—for far too many years, it has not been able to reach a level of providing good enough services for children and families. I welcome his summary of some of the progress that has been made, in particular in workforce stability. I will keep a close eye on that to ensure that we get Devon to the point where it is no longer under an intervention by the Department—but that intervention will continue for as long as necessary to get services to the place where his residents and the children he represents need them to be. Like many other hon. Members, he mentioned residential care and the concerns about profiteering, which I will return to in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) was absolutely right to highlight the situation in which more than 1,000 children are in care. If we were to take a step back and ask whether some of those children could have grown up with people who already loved them and could keep them safe, if we had the resources and intervention available to support the family network, I am convinced, as he is, that the answer would be yes. I welcome the spirit in which his offer was given; he has raised that offer with me before, which is not being defensive about the challenges that the city faces, but asks whether the Department will take a proactive approach in offering improvement support, doing it in a slightly different way. I confirm to him that yes, we will, and I am happy to have further conversations with him. Similarly, with Ofsted, I wish to ensure that its inspection framework and the chief inspector’s approach are totally in line with the Government reform programme. I am pleased to confirm that such work is very much under way.

The hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin) wants to write to me about the situations that she raised. I am happy to look into them. She is also right to raise the crucial role of education as part of that partnership for safeguarding children.

As a foster carer, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) knows better than anyone the importance of getting fostering right, so that we do not need to rely unnecessarily on residential care, with all the consequences of that. He was right to highlight the amazing work of Mockingbird constellations to support foster carers. In the coming days, I urge him to keep a close eye on any announcements that may be welcomed positively on both those fronts.

The hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) rightly highlighted the progress that has been made in Kirklees council and stressed the need to fund further reform, which is the action that the Government are taking with £2.4 billion to roll out the Families First programme. He made a point about off-rolling and children not on the school register, which I will return to directly in a moment.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) in congratulating the local Labour team and the children’s social care staff there on their work to turn around those services. Like him, I want to take action to disrupt the broken care market. I encourage local partners in the Tees valley and across the whole north-east to come forward with proposals for a regional care co-operative, which the Government will certainly consider.

The hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) was right to highlight the rural dimension of much of the debate. I, too, represent a rural constituency, and the way in which children’s social care is delivered needs to reflect the benefits of dispersed access to services. On the adoption and special guardianship support fund, the Government will set out very soon actions to give more certainty and improvements to that fund into the future. I shall keep Members abreast of those updates.

The hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) was absolutely right to highlight the improvements not just in English local authorities, but in his own Welsh constituency in Powys. He rightly highlighted the centrality of advocacy for children, in particular for those in care.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right to highlight the dimensions beyond just England. In fact, the UK Government have brazenly stolen Northern Ireland innovations in support of children in residential care. We look to bring the model of step-down care in fostering in Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK.

I will now answer directly some of the concerns expressed by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). I appreciate the spirit in which she offered to work collaboratively with the Government. She highlighted a number of the issues where the Government have been listening and responding, not least with regard to the children not in school register, where we have tabled a number of amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to address the specific points around burdens for families.

On funding, the hon. Lady quoted my report at me, so I will quote it back at her. I called for £2.6 billion of funding over a four-year reform programme. I am really proud to say that the Government have invested and met that and, in some cases, exceeded it. The Families First programme has received £2.4 billion on top of previous spending, and hundreds of millions of pounds will be spent to improve the care system. The job now is to make sure that that investment is spent well and has a lasting effect.

I recognise the point that the hon. Lady makes about private special schools and the profit cap. We will be setting out the full range of reforms that we will be making to the special educational needs system shortly. We have heard the point that she has made on that. We have also announced £3 billion of capital spending for local authorities across England to increase special educational needs provision.

Finally, the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin), talked about the scope of the children not in school register. I appreciate the cross-party nature of his remarks, but it is a challenging position to occupy to say that there are too many burdens on families while also advocating for amendments to the Bill that would dramatically widen the scope of the children not in school register to more families. The Conservative amendment that he referred to, tabled in the other place, would cover all families who have ever had a child protection investigation. Under a third of those investigations identify significant harm, so it would be a significant widening of scope. I will happily have a further conversation with the hon. Member about that, but I have concerns about the scope.

In the light of the time available, I will briefly summarise the specific action that the Government are taking to address concerns about the child protection system in England. It is absolutely essential that we build a more confident, decisive and expert-led child protection response that learns, not only from Sara’s appalling abuse, but from the experience of many other children who have been referenced in this debate.

We need to make sure that the children not in school register closes the loopholes where families are deliberately seeking to abuse their children. We need to build, as we are, multi-agency child protection teams that bring agencies from across different services, work in lockstep with the police, health services and social care, and make those judgments with only the most expert staff in their units. We are resourcing those and rolling them out as we speak. We need to make sure that well-resourced family help provision is in place for those families.

Nationally, we have just finished the consultation for the child protection authority. The national panel will be transferring to take on that function with a wider scope, in the light of Alexis Jay’s report. My ambition is to make sure that, in as many cases as possible where there is significant harm, we have a group of experts from across different services who can zoom in on that abuse and act decisively with the family court system, so that we have far fewer of these cases in the future. At a national level, my ambition is to make sure that we are able to rewire information sharing, including through the single unique identifier, so that we do not end up in that situation in the first place. I will finish by thanking the hon. Member for Woking for triggering this important debate.

10:58

[Mr Forster]

It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Western. I called this debate for several reasons: to highlight the failures of Surrey county council and call for its children’s services to be put into special measures, to push for national changes to keep children safe, and to give parliamentary colleagues the chance to raise their constituency stories about children’s services in local authorities. I believe I have done that.

The Government are taking action. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill should make some progress on child safeguarding, but I urge the Government to go further and faster in taking action to protect vulnerable children. I am pleased by and want to thank everyone for their kind words—I think we have had 15 speakers today. There are 15 recommendations from the Sara Sharif safeguarding report. I will continue to campaign to ensure that Sara’s legacy is that she is the last person who was killed by people who should have loved and cared for her.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.