Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment has she made of the adequacy of therapeutic support for children in kinship care.
Answered by Janet Daby
This government recognises the importance of health and therapeutic support services for all children, including those in kinship care. Ensuring every child receives the support they need is a key priority.
The Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) helps adoptive and special guardianship order children, and their families, access therapeutic interventions related to trauma and attachment.
In December 2023, we began to require the use of outcomes measurement tools with ASGSF-funded therapies to help assess the impact and effectiveness of different types of therapy. We hope that this will improve local and national understanding of the effectiveness of therapies for different children and families.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) internal policy reviews, (b) independent reviews, (c) external reviews, (d) taskforces, (e) public consultations, (f) investigations and (g) other reviews their Department launched between 5 July 2024 and 5 January 2025; what the titles were of those reviews; and how many of those reviews have been (i) completed and (ii) published.
Answered by Janet Daby
This government has outlined its ambitions through the Plan for Change, which sets out an ambitious set of milestones, across the Missions, for this Parliament. As the House would expect, the government continually reviews its work to ensure that it is delivering the best outcomes for the people of the United Kingdom, and that its policies continue to represent the best value for the taxpayer. Public reviews will be available on GOV.UK as they are published.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending eligibility for Pupil Premium Plus to (a) children who have not been looked after and (b) other children in kinship care.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The department is providing over £2.9 billion of pupil premium funding in 2024/25 to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils in England.
The criteria for pupil premium eligibility are:
The portion of funding for looked-after children and previously looked-after children is often referred to as pupil premium plus.
Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils and schools do not have to spend this funding so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. Schools can direct spending where the need is greatest, including to pupils with other identified needs, such as children in kinship care. Schools can also use pupil premium on whole class approaches that will benefit all pupils such as, for example, on high quality teaching.
The department will continue to keep eligibility under review to ensure that support is targeted at those who most need it.