Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the number of young people who are able to remain living with their foster carer in a staying put arrangement.

The cross-government care leaver strategy ‘Keep on Caring’ (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/535899/Care-Leaver-Strategy.pdf), which was published in July 2016, reiterated our commitment to Staying Put. It made clear that we want to maximise the number of eligible care leavers who take up the option to Stay Put. This includes continuing to provide funding to local authorities to implement Staying Put, totalling £92.12 million over the period 2016/17 to 2019-20. Through the Children and Social Work Act 2017, the government introduced a requirement for local authorities to publish a ‘Local Offer’ for care leavers, which should set out care leavers’ legal entitlements, and which should include the local authority’s policy on Staying Put.