Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the costs of delaying adoption of the recommendations of the 2022 Independent Review of Children’s Social Care; and if she will make a statement.

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 ensure 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 the 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 this Spending Review to support young people leaving care.

Also, the government is providing £3.85 billion social care grant to local authorities for adults and children’s social care this year.

The department recently published a Written Statement, entitled Children’s Social Care Reform, which provides an update to Parliament on progress made one year after the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. After two years, the department will refresh ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, and seek to scale up the new approaches that have been tested and developed, including bringing forward new legislation where necessary, subject to parliamentary time. The written statement is available at: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2023-05-23/hcws792.