Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans her Department has to improve support and training for foster carers and key workers in children's homes on (a) helping children overcome past experiences and (b) building positive relationships with children.

New mandatory qualifications for those working in and managing children’s homes were introduced in January 2015. These assess the key workers’ ability to build positive attachments and relationships with children and provide support for children who have experienced harm or abuse. On 6^th April, the Children’s Homes Regulations 2015 came into force. The regulations introduced new quality standards, ambitious in the outcomes they set out for children in residential care. Staff are being trained and supported to meet the quality standards through a one year implementation programme, funded by the Department for Education.

The government has invested significantly in supporting local authorities to embed evidence based interventions, offering training and support to foster carers, kinship carers, birth parents, residential workers and adopters. These interventions include ‘Keeping foster and kinship carers safe and supported’ (KEEP) and ‘Multidimensional treatment foster care’ (MTFC) which enable foster carers to support children and young people to build on their strengths, address the difficulties in every area of their lives and promote placement stability by building the skills and confidence of carers. Through the Innovation Programme, the Department is also supporting the introduction of the ‘Mockingbird project’, focusing on support for kinship and foster carers looking after adolescents.