Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the extent to which services supporting adopted and looked after children meet their needs.

Through our ‘Adoption Support that Works for All’ consultation on the future of adoption support, the department is seeking evidence from groups including young people, adopters and carers about the support they would like to see made available, including as young people navigate key transition points. We plan to publish our response later in the year.

Our Implementation Plan, ‘Delivering the Children’s Social Care Reset’, sets out an ambitious programme of change across children’s social care so that young people have opportunities to thrive however challenging their experiences have been. The plan can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-the-childrens-social-care-reset.

Our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act will drive forward our reforms and place a new duty on local authorities to provide Staying Close support to care leavers up to the age of 25 and to publish information about their arrangements to support care leavers’ transition to adulthood.