Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the supply of registered children's home placements for children with complex needs; and whether she has made an assessment of whether the £53 million allocated to create up to 200 additional placements by 2029 will be sufficient to end local authorities' use of unregistered children's homes.

The department is taking steps to improve the availability of suitable provision for children with the most complex needs. Evidence shows that a significant proportion of these children are currently placed in unsuitable or unregistered settings because the right provision is not available. To address this, we have invested £53 million capital funding to create up to 200 places in suitable residential homes for children with multiple and overlapping needs. This investment is targeted at relieving the most critical pressures within the system. The new places will be delivered through local authority-owned children's homes, designed to enable placement stability as needs change and develop by implementing robust design and flexible technology.

Alongside this, the department has launched Home Again, a programme that will establish multi-disciplinary teams operating across regional care cooperatives. The programme aims to improve placement stability, reduce the use of unnecessary restrictive practices and lessen reliance on unregistered provision.