Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure adequate provision of social care services for children and young people with disabilities and their families.

In the past three months we have published the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Green Paper, and the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care published its final report.

The SEND and AP Green Paper aims to ensure the right support is delivered in the right setting at the right time for children and young people with SEND. Our proposals include the introduction of national standards for how needs are assessed, identified and met across education, health and care in order to drive greater national consistency

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care has also now published its final report, making a number of recommendations on the support that disabled children and their families should receive. To respond to this Review we will publish a detailed and ambitious implementation strategy later this year. We are committed to aligning this with the SEND and AP reforms so that we build a coherent system with the best interest of all vulnerable children at its heart.

Local authorities have access to £54.1 billion core spending power in the 2022/23 financial year to deliver their services, including for children and young people, this is £3.7 billion more than in the 2021/22 financial year.

As part of this, the government has boosted the social care grant, increasing it by £636 million, and so bringing it to a total of around £2.35 billion in the 2022/23 financial year. Local authorities will have access to a one-off Services Grant in the 2022/23 financial year, which is worth over £800 million and can be used for all services, including children’s social care.

The department is also making better respite care available for those who care for children with special educational needs and disabilities, with councils invited to bid for an extra £30 million for the next three years to set up more than 10,000 additional short break and respite placements for vulnerable children.

We will publish proposals to improve support for young people with disabilities and their families.