Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of funding for secure accommodation welfare placements.

The government recognises the importance of ensuring that there is sufficient provision across the children’s secure estate including for welfare placements. As such, the department is investing £259 million to maintain capacity and expand provision in secure and open residential children’s homes.

This will provide high quality, safe homes for some of our most vulnerable children and young people and create new places and support provision in secure children’s homes (SCH) in all nine regions of England. This funding is enabling work to reconfigure and expand the estate, reduce the number of children waiting for a secure welfare place in an SCH and support local authorities to place children in their care closer to families and friends, where possible. This includes replacing ageing parts of the estate, investing in upgrades and improvement works to improve occupancy rates and increasing the number of welfare beds.

As part of this, the department will fund the building of two new homes in London and the West Midlands, where there is currently no secure provision, alongside extensions or adaptations to three current homes. This will support local authorities to maintain current capacity, whilst also adding around 50 new beds and 21 step-down beds by March 2025. The department envisages that many children from London or the West Midlands in need of secure care will ultimately be able to stay in their local area, rather than be placed far away from home.