Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements in (a) South Holland district and (b) Lincolnshire.

Lincolnshire County Council is participating in the £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder, which came out of the department’s children’s social care implementation strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love. The pathfinder aims to rebalance children’s social care away from costly crisis intervention to more meaningful and effective early support.

As part of the pathfinder, the department is working with a select number of local areas to test significant changes to how local areas help children and young people. This includes increasing support at the earlier end of the system, with the aim of keeping children with birth parents or wider family where safe to do so. This will help to reduce the number of children looked after and therefore drive down demand for foster care or other placements.

There is support available from the department where children are unable to stay with their birth families and foster care placements are sought. Lincolnshire County Council are being supported by the Fosterlink support service. Fosterlink provides support for local authorities to improve the way they recruit foster carers by reviewing current processes to identify areas for service and practice improvements, as well as creating a national network in which to share best practice.

More broadly, the department is investing over £36 million this parliament to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme, so foster care is available for more children who need it. This will boost approvals of foster carers, as well as taking steps to retain the foster carers we have.

Greater financial support for foster carers will help improve the experiences of all children in care. For the second year running, the department is uplifting the National Minimum Allowance (NMA) above the rate of inflation. For 2024/2025, the NMA will increase by 6.88%. This is on top of a 12.43% NMA increase in 2023/24.

In addition, the department estimates that changes to tax and benefit allowances will give the average foster carer an additional £450 per year as well as simplifying the process for self-assessment returns for most foster carers.

The department will also build on this investment since 2014 of over £8 million to help embed the Mockingbird programme, an innovative model of peer support for foster parents and the children in their care where children benefit from an extended family environment.