Children in Care: Coronavirus

(asked on 11th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether it remains his Department’s policy as set out in Coronavirus (COVID-19): guidance for children's social care services that no one has to leave care during this period; what support is being offered to local authorities to cover any additional costs associated with extended placements for people due to leave care; and what recent assessment he has made of the effect of that guidance on placement availability for children in care.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 14th January 2021

At the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, we recognised that care leavers would need extra support, in particular due to their financial vulnerability and their higher risk of loneliness and isolation. That is why we published guidance to local authorities, asking them to review decisions about whether young people who would have been due to move out of care should continue to do so; and to delay moves if the young person did not want to leave their current placement, or it was not in their best interests.

Where young people want to move out of care, the guidance asks local authorities to ensure that the move is in accordance with the young person’s wishes and that they are assured that the setting the young person is moving into is safe in relation to risk factors arising from coronavirus (COVID-19). This guidance is still in force.

We have provided £4.6 billion additional funding to local authorities to meet the extra demands placed on them due to the COVID-19 outbreak, including the costs of extending placements for young people who would otherwise have left care earlier.

No formal assessment has been undertaken on the impact of the guidance on placement availability for children in care, although the department is in regular contact with local authorities to understand the support care leavers need during the COVID-19 outbreak. Feedback from local authorities indicates that they are taking account of the guidance in their decision-making, and are supporting many young people to stay in care at this time, having judged this as possible within their local placement provision.

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