Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the reasons why the number of looked after children aged over 16 has increased; and what plans he has to manage that increase.

Factors leading to there being more older than younger looked-after children include an increase in the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (who are mainly 15 to 17 year olds); increasing efforts to protect children from criminal activity such as child sexual exploitation and gang and drug culture; and a recent court judgement which means 16 to 17 year olds are taken into care when they present as homeless.

The Department for Education is launching a new national Tackling Child Exploitation support service, backed by up to £2 million, which will operate up until 2022, to address child sexual exploitation together with other forms of child criminal exploitation. The department has also made a £1.3 million contribution to the controlling migration fund over two years to fund 8 local authorities to provide better access to initial assessment and education for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.

The department remains committed to ensuring that local authorities only seek to take children into care where they must do so, including through the reform programme outlined in ‘Putting children first’. We are working across government and with local family justice boards to better understand the challenges in the family justice system and to consider what else can be done to address these. In addition at Autumn Budget, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced £84 million for ‘Strengthening families, protecting children’, a programme which will support a number of local authorities to improve their social work practice and decision-making, to support their most vulnerable children to stay safely at home, thriving in stable family circumstances - where that is in their best interests.