Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Departments publication entitled Stable Homes, Built on Love: Implementation Strategy and Consultation published February 2023, what steps she is taking to help implement the strategy in local authorities who are not designated as pathfinder areas over the next two years.

The department has a clear ambition to improve all children’s services across England, as set out in the publication ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love'.

Many of the actions set out in our strategy will impact all local authorities. This includes the implementation of our National Framework for Children’s Social Care as well as providing support and training to kinship carers. The department is also supporting local authorities with the recruitment and retention of social workers by taking measures, such as increasing the number of social worker apprenticeships and consulting on the use of agency staff.

In the delivery chapter of ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, we have set out the actions that local authorities can take now to create the future system we want to see. This includes creating working conditions that allow workforces to thrive, reviewing the services they commission and provide to make sure they reflect the best evidence, reviewing existing support offers for kinship carers, and reviewing all available opportunities to support children in care and care leavers to build relationships.

The department has also outlined where we will be taking a ’test and learn’ approach to establish how to introduce some of the most complex and far-reaching reforms. This includes the Families First for Children Pathfinders, and Regional Care Cooperative Pathfinders. The department will build in opportunities for feedback to ensure learning from the pathfinders is shared across all local authorities.