Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made with Cabinet colleagues on rolling out the Family Hubs programme.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
On 9 February 2023, the government announced a number of updates which demonstrate positive progress in delivering the manifesto commitment to champion family hubs and their continued commitment to ensure every baby has the best start in life. The announcement included:
An additional £28 million has also been made available to the 75 local authorities to improve children's home learning environments, helping them to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-families-to-benefit-from-local-support-in-rollout-of-family-hubs.
Thousands of parents and carers across England will be able to access local, co-ordinated support and advice in raising a family, through the 75 upper tier local authorities that have received investment from the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.
The 75 upper tier local authorities who are eligible for this Family Hubs and Start for Life funding were announced on 2 April 2022. The Programme Guide and sign up process was launched in August 2022 and all 75 local authorities have now signed up to the programme. We are now working with local authorities on their delivery plans.
Local authorities will be expected to open family hubs in the first half of 2023 and meet programme expectations by the end of March 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve education outcomes for care leavers.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Minister (Equalities)
This government is committed to ensuring that all care leavers are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes.
On 2 February, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, our strategy for the reform of children’s social care. The strategy sets out the department’s plans to improve the education, employment, and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. This includes, from 2027, a year-on-year narrowing of the gap in care leaver higher education participation rates compared to the general population.
The department will do this by increasing the support available in both higher and further education including the expansion of the Virtual School Head role to include care leavers up to 25 years old, the introduction of a gold standard accreditation scheme for higher education and further education institutions supporting care leavers, and further £24 million in pupil premium plus style between 2023 and 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to upgrade further education colleges.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
We have committed £1.5 billion between 2020 and 2026, through the further education (FE) Capital Transformation Programme, to upgrade FE colleges. This programme seeks to tackle poor condition in the FE college estate so that FE colleges are excellent places for young people and adults to learn.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on increasing covid-19 vaccination uptake among school pupils.
Answered by Robin Walker
Vaccines are the best way we can protect ourselves and keep children and young people in face-to-face education. On 22 December, the government accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation that a primary course of vaccination should be offered to children aged 5 to 11 years old who are in a clinical risk group, or who are a household contact of someone (of any age) who is immunosuppressed. On 24 January, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that the department will distribute a total of £8 million in funding to NHS England to support secondary schools with the vitally important in-school vaccination programme for young people. This comes as over 50% of 12 to 15-year-olds, over 1.5 million people, have now had at least one dose of the vaccine.
To accelerate the COVID-19 programme in schools, the NHS has bolstered the in-school offer to make it more efficient and increase the scale and pace of delivery, as well as target communications to parents, young people and the public to improve uptake and increase overall confidence in the programme.
To ensure even more young people can get the vaccine as quickly as possible, the national booking service is open for vaccination bookings for young people. This service is available at: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/.
To support schools, and based on feedback we gathered, we have published a new ‘how to’ guide which is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cT6adcSVsLer0kvcSuI4QcBYdlmdgb5x. This includes useful information and resources for schools, including a template letter that can be used to communicate with parents. The COVID-19 vaccination guidance and leaflets for parents, children and young people are being translated by Public Health England. The accessible versions include braille and British Sign Language, as well as web and print versions in 27 languages.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Bexhill and Battle)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to implement the recommendations of the Early Years Healthy Development Review.
Answered by Will Quince
At the Budget, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a £300 million to transform ‘Start for Life’ and family help services in half of the council areas across England.
This will fund a network of Family Hubs and specific support, within those Hubs, for parent-infant mental health, breastfeeding services and parenting programmes. In addition, we will be asking all 75 local areas to publish their 'Start for Life' offer and providing funding for trials of innovative workforce models in a smaller number of areas.
Family hubs are a way of joining up locally to improve access to services, the connections between families, professionals, services and providers, and putting relationships at the heart of family help.