Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help improve access to therapy services for children in care.

Children in care and care leavers are significantly more likely to have poor mental health. The department’s latest data shows that two thirds of children become looked after due to abuse or neglect and we know that care experienced adults are at 4 to 5 times greater risk of suicide attempt than their peers. Providing effective support is crucial given the significant trauma that many of these children and young people have experienced and its lasting impact.

To support looked after children, looked after children attract pupil premium plus funding of £2,570 per year. This is managed by the local authority’s virtual school head and can be used to facilitate a wide range of educational support including additional mentoring, tuition, and therapeutic services.

Given our significant concerns for the health and wellbeing of children in care and care leavers, the department is working alongside the Department of Health and Social Care to review and update current statutory guidance on promoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after children. This guidance sets expectations on local authorities, Directors of Public Health, commissioners of health services for children, NHS England and others, for the promotion of physical, emotional and mental health.

Regulations require an assessment of physical, emotional and mental health needs for every child when they enter care and a plan to be developed to address their needs.

As part of the department’s statutory guidance review, we will consider what changes are needed to further ensure that children in care and care leavers receive the support they need for their physical and mental health and wellbeing, including access to any needed treatment or therapy.

In addition to the statutory guidance review, the department is also undertaking a programme of work specific to children with complex needs. Children with complex needs and multiple needs are some of our most vulnerable children in the care system. The outcomes for these children can often be very poor, with neither children’s social care nor health services alone capable of meeting their needs, and services not working effectively together for these children.

Since July 2023, the department and NHS England have jointly led a Task and Finish Group to consider how to improve the way system partners work together to support and improve outcomes for children and young people who are deprived of their liberty and who are in the most complex situations.

Drawing on the best evidence, including the voice of children, input from professionals and commissioned research, the department will, in collaboration with NHS England, test a new, community-based approach to pathways and provision which provides treatment and care, bringing in professionals from children’s social care, health, justice and education. This will enable the system to deliver specialist care and accommodation for children who have complex needs.

We have also recently commissioned independent research on how the system works, its current impacts and how we could do things differently to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. We plan to publish this research in summer 2025. We will draw on these reports to support the development and testing of evidence-based models of safe, therapeutic care that delivers integrated, consistent, and collaborative practices for these children and young people.