Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support is provided to birth parents going through the adoption process.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The Adoption Agencies Regulations 2005 set out what support adoption agencies must offer birth parents. This includes counselling and information about the implications of adoption and an assessment of birth parents’ support needs, if they request this. Agencies must also discuss future contact so that this can be considered by the court on any application for a placement or adoption order, and must also ask about birth parents’ wishes regarding the religion and culture of their child should the child go to live with adopters.
Regional Adoption Agency leaders have recently set up a Birth Parent Reference Group, which meets regularly to ensure that the voices of birth families are being heard and considered in the development of adoption services nationally.
Asked by: Tobias Ellwood (Conservative - Bournemouth East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent steps his Department has taken to support students' mental health following the outbreak of covid-19.
Answered by Andrea Jenkyns
In the longer term, the department is offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by 2025, enabling them to introduce effective, whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing. Over 8,000 schools and colleges are already receiving grants and this year, we are providing an additional £10 million, so two thirds of state schools and colleges will have access to a grant by March 2023.
In further education, we are investing over £800 million across the next 3 academic years to fund an average of 40 additional learning hours for band 5 and T Level students in 16 to 19 education. The additional hours can be used to support areas, including mental health and wellbeing, where these are a barrier for students effectively accessing teaching and learning.
Whilst it is for higher education (HE) providers to determine what welfare and counselling services they need to provide to their students to offer that support, the government and the Office for Students (OfS) are proactive in funding and promoting effective practice in this area, ensuring that providers can access evidence to inform their approaches.
We have worked with the OfS and Student Minds to provide Student Space, which is designed to work alongside existing services, to bridge any gaps in support for students arising from the pandemic. Funded with up to £3.6 million by the OfS and the HE Funding Council Wales, Student Space has now received a funding commitment of £262,500 annually, for three years, to extend this provision of online mental health support to all students in England and Wales to 2026.
We have also asked the OfS to distribute £15 million of funding in the 2022/23 financial year to give additional support for transitions from school or college to university, and through targeting funding to support partnership working with NHS services to provide pathways of care for students.
In the Budget and Spending Review for 2021, the government announced £82 million to create a network of family hubs in 75 areas. This is part of a wider £302 million package to transform services for parents, carers, babies and children in half of council areas across England. The 75 local authorities eligible to receive the funding were announced on 2 April 2022. Information on support for vulnerable families can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/infants-children-and-families-to-benefit-from-boost-in-support.
Asked by: Kim Leadbeater (Labour - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to (a) protect and (b) support school staff from (i) abuse and (ii) aggression from parents and others in the school community.
Answered by Robin Walker
It is never acceptable for anyone to harass or intimidate education staff. Schools can bar someone from the premises if they feel that their aggressive, abusive, or insulting behaviour or language is a risk to staff or pupils. Some incidents may constitute a criminal offence and schools should report those that they think may come into this category to the police.
All schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy which outlines measures to encourage good behaviour, and the sanctions that will be imposed for pupils' misbehaviour. This should be communicated to all pupils, school staff and parents.
The department will shortly be consulting on the behaviour in schools guidance and the suspensions and permanent exclusions guidance. These will equip headteachers to create calm, orderly, safe, and supportive school environments where both pupils and staff can flourish in safety and dignity. This will also encourage schools to work with parents in the creation of these positive school cultures.
The department takes the wellbeing and mental health of education staff very seriously. In November 2021, the department announced the award of a £760,000 contract to the charity Education Support to provide peer support and counselling to around 2000 school leaders. Further information on this can be found at: https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/get-help/help-for-your-staff/wellbeing-services/school-leaders-support/england-live-application-school-leader-support-service/.
Education Support also provides a free helpline for all education staff. Additionally, we have launched the education staff wellbeing charter. This charter is a set of commitments from the government, Ofsted, and schools and colleges to protect and promote the wellbeing of staff. It can be used to inform a school or college wide approach to wellbeing or to develop a staff wellbeing strategy. Further information on this charter can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter.
Asked by: Tommy Sheppard (Scottish National Party - Edinburgh East)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reason self-employed people are ineligible for statutory adoption pay.
Answered by Paul Scully
So far, the Government has focused on supporting employed parents as they do not generally have the same level of flexibility over their work as self-employed parents do. But we recognise that affordability may limit the time away from work that some self-employed adopters can take, and this is why statutory adoption guidance says that Local Authorities should consider making a payment - equivalent to Maternity Allowance - in cases where adopters do not qualify for any statutory payment because of their self-employment. Prospective adopters are also entitled to an assessment of their family’s needs and can benefit from a range of support including discretionary means-tested financial support, advice, information and counselling, and support services.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide mental health support for students and staff returning to school.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Mental health and wellbeing are a priority for the government. Throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, we have prioritised keeping schools open above all else because they are vital for young people’s wellbeing, as well as their education.
We are investing £3 billion to boost learning, including £950 million in additional funding for schools which they can use to support pupils’ mental health and wellbeing.
In May, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we announced more than £17 million of mental health funding to improve mental health and wellbeing support in schools and colleges. This includes £7 million additional funding for local authorities to deliver the Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme. This builds on our £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme in 2020/21, which provided free expert training, support and resources for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing additional pressures from the last year. Wellbeing for Education Return has been used by more than 90% of councils since its launch last summer: https://www.minded.org.uk/Catalogue/Index?HierarchyId=0_48943_49165&programmeId=48943.
Up to 7,800 schools and colleges in England will be offered funding worth £9.5 million to train a senior mental health lead from their staff in the next academic year, which is part of the government’s commitment to offering this training to all state schools and colleges by 2025.
Training will provide senior leads with the knowledge and skills to develop or introduce a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing in their setting. It will encourage staff to develop their own understanding of issues affecting their pupils, giving young people a voice in how their school or college addresses wellbeing and working with parents and monitoring pupils where appropriate.
This support for practice in schools is in addition to the £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support we announced in March, which will include increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams. The support teams - which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges - will grow from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children.
The department has brought together all its sources of advice for schools and colleges into a single site, which includes signposting to external sources of mental health and wellbeing support: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mental-health-and-wellbeing-support-in-schools-and-colleges#mental-health-and-wellbeing-resources.
In May, we published the first ever Education Staff Wellbeing Charter: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. The charter sets out the actions that government and other organisations, including Ofsted, will take to improve wellbeing of staff in schools and colleges.
Since June 2020, we have funded peer-support and one-to-one telephone supervision from experts, which has supported over 300 school leaders. This June, we launched an invitation to tender seeking a contractor to provide peer support and one-to-one counselling to least 2,000 school leaders, starting in the autumn 2021.
We know flexible working opportunities can promote staff wellbeing and have appointed the training provider ‘Timewise’ to train school leaders to implement flexible working practices in schools.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to introduce statutory adoption pay for self-employed adoptive parents; and what plans he has to enable self-employed adoptive parents to receive the same benefits as other self-employed parents.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government recognises that it is crucial to the success of an adoption placement that an adopter takes time off work to care for and bond with their child. This is why employed adoptive parents have broadly the same rights and protections as birth parents.
So far, the Government has focused on supporting employed parents as they do not generally have the same level of flexibility over their work as self-employed parents do. But we recognise that affordability may limit the time away from work that some self-employed adopters can take, and this is why statutory adoption guidance says that Local Authorities should consider making a payment - equivalent to Maternity Allowance - in cases where adopters do not qualify for any statutory payment because of their self-employment. Prospective adopters are also entitled to an assessment of their family’s needs and can benefit from a range of support including discretionary means-tested financial support, advice, information and counselling, and support services.
We are not ruling out providing further support for self-employed parents in the future and we continue to keep differences in treatment between self-employed and employed people under review. Since 2010, we have taken significant steps to equalise the state benefits provided to the employed and self-employed, including giving the self-employed access to the full rate of the new State Pension for the first time.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what steps the church is taking to support families during covid-19 lockdown.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The three lockdown periods of the last 12 months have seen considerable innovations by clergy and youth workers across the Church.
The Education Office of Church House Westminster has partnered with the Government's online Oak Academy to provide educational resources and materials for parents to use in home-schooling. Clergy have also been developing new resources, including virtual prayer services, school assemblies, study groups, fellowship meetings and craft workshops. That is in addition to online church services, bereavement counselling, marriage preparation and marriage support services.
Asked by: Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the announcement by Childline on 13 January that there was a 16 per cent increase in the number of counselling sessions about mental health with children aged 11 and under from April to December 2020 as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answered by Lord Bethell
We continue to work closely with the Department for Education, NHS England and NHS Improvement, Public Health England and a wide range of stakeholders to support all people’s mental wellbeing and mental health, and we are working with them to ensure that children and young people and their parents or carers know what support is available. For those who need them, NHS services remained open throughout the first wave and will do so throughout the second.
Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will introduce a fully-funded national programme on emotional wellbeing and recovery in the context of covid-19 for all school-aged children.
Answered by Vicky Ford
We know that the COVID-19 outbreak has had an impact on children and young people’s wellbeing and mental health. That is why we have worked on a range of support packages to ensure support is provided for all those who need it, without diverting funding from elsewhere. It is important for schools and colleges to have the freedom to decide what support to offer pupils based on their particular needs and to draw on an evidence base of effective practice.
Our £1 billion COVID catch-up package, with £650 million shared across schools over the 2020-21 academic year, is supporting education settings to put the right catch-up and pastoral support in place. The Education Endowment Foundation has published a COVID-19 support guide to support schools to direct this funding, which includes further information about interventions to support pupils’ mental health and wellbeing: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/.
Ofsted’s October 2020 COVID-19 briefing on its interim visits to schools confirmed that a number of school leaders are considering using this funding to pay for interventions such as additional pastoral staff and counselling for pupils. It can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-series-briefing-on-schools-october-2020.
Schools cannot provide mental health support on their own. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has published a mental health and wellbeing support plan, which sets out a wide range of action that the government is supporting across the NHS and wider services to support mental health and wellbeing recovery, including for children and young people: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/staying-mentally-well-winter-plan-2020-to-2021/staying-mentally-well-this-winter.
It includes the £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return programme funded jointly by the Department for Education and DHSC. This will provide schools and colleges all over England with the knowledge and practical skills they need to support teachers, students and parents, to help improve how they respond to the emotional impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. The programme is funding expert advisers in every area of England to train and support schools and colleges during the autumn and spring terms.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department provides to support local services to assist with the effective assessment of the psychological support needs of bereaved parents.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Government has funded Sands, the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death charity to work with other baby loss charities and Royal Colleges to produce and support the roll-out of a National Bereavement Care Pathway to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the National Health Service. The pathway covers a range of circumstances of a baby loss including miscarriage, stillbirth, termination of pregnancy for medical reasons, neonatal death and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.