Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will introduce a programme that (a) encourages and (b) trains families to provide mother and baby fostering placements.

Local authorities have a duty to ensure they have sufficient placements to meet the needs of the looked after children in their area, this includes parent and child foster placements.

The department continues to prioritise supporting local authorities and foster carers to provide stable and loving foster homes. The department is investing in helping local authorities provide additional foster care places, including trialling different ways to plan and commission placements and developing a social media toolkit to help local authorities with no and low-cost recruitment activity.

The Fostering Services (England) Regulation 2011, and the National Minimum Standards for Fostering Services, clearly set out the expectation that support and training is made available to foster carers to assist them in meeting the specific needs of the children they are caring for or are expected to care for. This would include ensuring that foster carers have the knowledge and skills required to support looked after children in a parent and child foster placement. The department also funds Fosterline and Fosterline Plus, an independent, confidential, and impartial service offering advice on fostering issues to any current and prospective foster carers.