Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Written Statement of 23 May by the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing on Children's Social Care Update, HCWS792, and to the briefing The Cost of Delaying Reform to Children’s Social Care published on 22 May by Action for Children, Barnardo's, The Children's Society, National Children's Bureau, and NSPCC, what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the public purse of delays to reform of children’s social care.

There needs to be a fundamental shift away from crisis intervention and towards earlier intervention, and ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ sets out how the department intends to achieve that. These are complex reforms, with complicated systemic interactions. It is critical that the department takes a test and learn approach and ensures that these models can be rolled out effectively.

Alongside the Implementation Strategy, the department announced funding of £200 million by 2024/25 to address urgent issues facing children and families now, to lay the foundations for whole system reform, and set the national direction for change. This is on top of the £142 million by 2024/25 to take forward reforms to unregulated provision in children’s social care, £160 million as announced in March 2022, over the next three years to deliver our Adoption Strategy. This is also in addition to £259 million over the Spending Review 2021 period to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes, and £230 million over the same period to support young people leaving care.

This is in addition to the £3.85 billion social care grant to local authorities for adults and children’s social care this year.