Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to make it a requirement for private tutors to undergo safeguarding checks and be subject to the DBS requirements applicable to directly employed teachers; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Nothing is more important than the safety of children, which is why private tutors are already eligible to receive basic Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificates, which parents and carers should ask to see to assure themselves of a tutor’s suitability. In addition to asking to see a private tutor’s basic DBS certificate, parents and carers might also consider what other information may be available to help them assess a tutor’s suitability to work with their children. It is recommended that parents confirm a tutor’s identity. Testimonials from parents and/or pupils themselves will help provide reassurance about the tutor’s teaching ability and about the way in which they interact with the pupil.
Parents and carers should also look to ensure that the home tutoring takes place in a room in the home that allows the parent access to enable them to supervise.
The Government is exploring ways to allow self employed people, including tutors, to access enhanced criminal records checks.
On 21 October 2020, the Department published ‘Keeping children safe during community activities, after-school clubs and tuition: non-statutory guidance for providers running out-of-school settings’. This guidance is for organisations or individuals who provide community activities, tuition or after school clubs for children, also known as out of school settings (OOSS) providers, as well as their staff and volunteers.
The guidance aims to help providers of OOSS understand best practice for creating a safe environment for children in their care and give parents and carers confidence that their child is in a safe activity or teaching environment. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-out-of-school-settings-code-of-practice.
Alongside this, the Department has also published accompanying guidance for parents and carers to help support them when choosing OOSS providers for their children, including positive signs and red flags to look out for. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-parents-and-carers-on-safeguarding-children-in-out-of-school-settings.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to announce guidance for schools wanting to restore educational residential trips from the summer 2021 term.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Schools are advised against all educational visits at this time. The Department is working on advice for schools on the planning and booking of residential trips when it is safe to do so and in line with the Government’s roadmap to recovery, as set out in: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-response-spring-2021/covid-19-response-spring-2021. The advice will be published shortly.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to respond to the urgent letters from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham of 10 December 2020 and 26 January 2021, on declined reimbursement costs for a local primary school.
Answered by Nick Gibb
I can confirm that a response has been sent to my hon. Friend, the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to extend funding for the Adoption Support Fund beyond March 2021.
Answered by Vicky Ford
Funding for the Adoption Support Fund will be continuing for the next financial year of 2021-22.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to replace the Residential Care Leadership Board; and for what reasons that Board was abolished.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The Residential Care Leadership Board is no longer being convened because the board’s remit of responding to recommendations made in Sir Martin Narey’s 2016 Review of Residential Children’s Care, has been successfully completed. The department is taking steps to ensure that we draw on sectoral expertise through a range of different forums to address current issues affecting the sector, not least in our response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The government has committed to undertaking a bold, broad and independently led care review. This will launch as soon as possible and will support improvements in the children’s social care system.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many adoptions have (a) been completed and (b) broken down in each year since 2010.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The department does not hold information on the number of all children in England who are adopted.
The latest figures on the number of children in England who have been adopted from care are published in table H1 of the statistical release, entitled ’National tables: Children Looked after in England including adoptions 2018-19’, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2018-to-2019. Figures for the reporting year ending 31 March 2020 will be published later this year.
The department does not collect information on adoptions that were disrupted. National figures on numbers of children who started to be looked after, and who had a previous permanence arrangement, including adoption orders, are available in table C1 of the above release. However, these figures were collected for the first time in 2014 and should be treated with caution. The information is based on self-declaration and, for several children, the previous permanence arrangement is not known.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the barriers to increasing the number of adoptions.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The department assess and address barriers to increasing adoption numbers on a regular basis. One barrier has been in recruiting the right adopters for the children waiting. To address this, the government is investing £1 million in adopter recruitment during the 2020-21 financial year, with a focus on generating an increase in people of all backgrounds coming forward to adopt children who wait the longest. This includes funding the cross-sector national recruitment campaign, #YouCanAdopt. Launched in September 2020, a key aspect of this campaign is its inclusivity. It aims to break down perceived barriers to adoption, encouraging more adopters of diverse backgrounds to step forward.
The COVID-19 outbreak has introduced new challenges for adoption. Early in the outbreak, we introduced regulatory flexibilities to ensure adoption processes could continue despite the lockdown restrictions and some of these changes remain in place. For example, this includes the flexibility relating to health assessments for prospective adopters. This allows agencies to proceed to stage 2 of the assessment process without a health check, as long as those checks are completed before the end of that stage. Where new challenges have arisen with the announcement of a second lockdown, further regulatory changes have been introduced. This includes exemptions to allow adoption introductions to continue during the new lockdown, alleviating delays for children moving to their new loving homes.
The COVID-19 outbreak has also introduced barriers in progressing adoption cases through the courts. However, adoption is included in the list of priorities for the courts, which have been encouraged to make use of hybrid courts (a combination of virtual and physical hearings) to progress cases where possible. The department continues to work closely with the Ministry of Justice, the judiciary, The Association of Directors for Children’s Services and Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service on these issues.
We know that some prospective adopters have concerns about what support will be available to them. The core Adoption Support Fund (ASF) has provided £177 million since 2015 to help pay for essential therapeutic services for over 62,000 adoptive and eligible special guardianship families. The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Adoption and Permanence published a report in July 2019, and our own independent evaluations of the Fund have concluded that the ASF was having a positive transformative effect on the lives of children and families.