Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Government is taking steps to support local authorities to improve collection and storage of children’s services data.

Local authorities record and store children’s services data in digital case management systems they procure from the market. Our Children’s Social Care Digital Programme has worked with local authorities and case management system suppliers to develop guidance, which will be published shortly. It aims to support local authority planning, procurement and implementation of case management systems.

We are also working across government on how data and technology can be used to enable better multi-agency information sharing in safeguarding, including an investigation study on the feasibility of adopting a consistent child identifier.