Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to ensure that children who need it receive sufficient safeguarding to protect them from negative adult influence outside the school setting.

The Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance is clear that all children must be appropriately safeguarded and supported, recognising threats may arise from within or outside the home.

The department is working across government to tackle all forms of exploitation and harm. In the 2021/22 financial year, we provided £1.5 million to 20 local authorities across seven regions to strengthen multi-agency approaches to safeguarding adolescents at risk of extra-familial harm. Between 2019 and 2022, we funded the Tackling Child Exploitation Support Programme to support strategic leaders in 84 local areas.  This year, the department is working with the sector, and other government departments, to bring together the best available evidence into a set of practice principles to support multi-agency approaches to tackling extra-familial harm. Protecting children is at the heart of the government’s online harms agenda, and we continue to work with the Department for Culture Media and Sport and the Home Office on the Online Safety Bill, which is currently passing through Parliament.

The department is now reviewing the recommendations made in the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and will publish an implementation strategy by the end of this year.