Children: Coronavirus

(asked on 28th May 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the analysis by The Children’s Society, Barnardo’s, Action for Children, NSPCC and the National Children’s Bureau, published on 18 May 2020, what steps he is taking to ensure that local authority children’s services are adequately prepared for a potential spike in referrals after the covid-19 lockdown is lifted.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 8th June 2020

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the government has provided over £3.2 billion of additional funding to support local authorities in meeting COVID-19 related pressures including on children’s services. We will keep this under very close review over the coming weeks and months.

The department has set up dedicated regional teams that are in frequent contact with local authorities. Bringing together expertise from across the department, these teams monitor the challenges local authorities are facing and can provide support and guidance where appropriate. To assist in this, Ofsted has suspended routine inspections of children’s care services and only urgent inspections for specific concerns will go ahead so that children’s safety is prioritised. Ofsted inspectors have been deployed to support our regional teams and local authorities to provide their expertise.

We have recently set up a fortnightly data collection from local authorities to capture timely intelligence on referrals. This will allow the department to support local authorities to respond to any changes as the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted.

The department has committed over £100 million to support access to social care services and remote education, including by providing laptops, tablets and 4G wireless routers to vulnerable and disadvantaged children. We are also in continual discussions with charities on the support they provide and currently need. We have committed additional funding worth £26.4 million directly to support them, including £1.6 million to expand NSPCC’s helpline.

We are working closely with local authorities to ensure workforce capacity is sufficient to cope with any potential spike in referrals. This includes weekly discussions between the Chief Social Worker and practice leaders.

Through emergency legislation and with Social Work England, we have reinstated the professional registration of 8,000 former social workers so that they can re-join the profession, providing additional resource where it is required.

We have also developed The Social Work Together online tool in partnership with Social Work England and the Local Government Association, so those social workers who have registered are available to support their local community if needed.

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