Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which organisations requested changes to the (a) Residential Family Centres Regulations 2002, (b) Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005, (c) Children (Private Arrangements for Fostering) Regulations 2005, (d) Children Act 1989 Representations Procedure (England) Regulations 2006, (e) Education and Inspections Act 2006 (Inspection of Local Authorities) Regulations 2007, (f) Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, (g) Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011, (h) Children Act 2004 (Joint Area Reviews) Regulations 2015, (i) Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and (j) Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Fees and Frequency of Inspections) (Children’s Homes etc.) Regulations 2015 which were subsequently incorporated into the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020.

The safety of vulnerable children remains a high priority, and we have taken a number of steps to ensure this is prioritised during the COVID-19 outbreak, including ensuring that vulnerable children can continue to attend education and childcare settings that are closed to the majority of children.

The vast majority of statutory duties on children’s social care remain unchanged. However, in light of the current pressures COVID-19 is bringing on social care services, and the risk of such pressures increasing, we have reviewed our regulations to allow some temporary and limited flexibility, to be used where absolutely necessary, to enable children's services to continue to support vulnerable children in the most effective and safest way during the outbreak. The regulatory changes will be kept under continuous review and will expire on 25 September 2020 unless extended.

The department consulted a wide range of stakeholders and local authority practitioners about what changes to children’s social care regulations would be appropriate and has carried out an internal review of all existing regulations over the last couple of months since the start of the outbreak. The changes made anticipate the potential issues children’s social care may face during this period, as well as those currently being dealt with. Our starting point has been to make minimal changes to ensure the safe functioning of children’s social care during COVID-19. The additional flexibilities should only be used when absolutely necessary and in line with overarching safeguarding and welfare duties.

The department has produced COVID-19 guidance for local authorities on children’s social care which is currently being updated to include a plain English explanation of what each regulation change does. This guidance is due to be published very shortly and will be kept under review alongside the Regulations.