Speeches by Daby.

“There is guidance for local authorities around family group decision making. There will also be training for professionals in how that is carried out and that information will be available and present. It is very important that that family group decision making is a safe place for the families and around the decisions …”

“This would not just be for the Department of Education, is my understanding. It would be across Departments. I will take this away and look at it and come back to you with a cross-departmental perspective.”

“The Government are committed to improving mental health support to children and to young people. It is critical in helping young people and children to achieve and to thrive throughout their life. There are challenges within the NHS and there are challenges that they are addressing in those areas. When a child is first…”

“I am aware that all of the Departments recognise their responsibilities as corporate parents and are dedicated in this space. I believe I need to get back to you on this to give you some more information. I will bring in Fran on this point.”

“I did not catch all of that question, I am afraid.”

“I am very pleased that local authorities are prioritising the needs of care leavers and are taking this very seriously. We need to reduce care leavers from having mental health issues, from being in need, and also from moving into criminality. It is an area where local authorities recognise they have a responsibility a…”

“We recognise the postcode-type lottery for care leavers. We are committed to making sure that care leavers have a good experience. You have already highlighted where we are aware of some of the awful situations that care leavers fall into because they do not have the support that they so crucially need. We have a cross…”

“The reforms are also seeking to further family group decision making, to look at other provisions for children, making sure that you know the support is there for the family. That is looking at provisional kinship care as well and where interventions are needed to support the families through that.”

“Family meetings can take place as well, but local authorities will obviously have some guidance and national guidance is something that we can take away and have a discussion with the relevant groups.”

“Thank you for raising that. I recently met with a family rights group and I met with parents. It was very rewarding because they were able to explain to me about some of the contact they have lost with their children and some where their children have returned home in a planned way but the reunification planning did no…”

“It works, with some of the information we have already shared, that if we are reducing the number of children that come into care, automatically the caseload will come down because the social worker has children as part of their caseload. If they have 15 looked-after children, they have 15 cases. But as we are working …”

“We do need to keep an eye on it, and we absolutely are. We are assessing and reviewing it. We have Social Work England and BASWA, very keen players and organisations in this, who want to make sure that we have the social workforce that we need and that we retain them. That is crucial. We have also seen that caseloads h…”

“We have lots of avenues in which somebody could be trained to become a qualified social worker, but we absolutely recognise that we need to recruit and retain social workers. We have recently had some very pleasing and encouraging statistics on social work and, in sharing that with you, we have had the highest number o…”

“I will pass on to Fran for a moment to help clarify while I look for some information.”

“In making sure that we have got the early help, the intervention, the family, the family hubs, that is part of making sure—”

“The early intervention work is key to our whole system approach of making fundamental changes to children coming into care. It is very much about making sure that we have the support systems and mechanisms in place early. That will be done through the family hub-type structures and making sure that we have the more joi…”

“You are absolutely right, we face many challenges now that we are in government. One of those is that over the last 10 years the number of looked-after children has increased by 22% and has reached 83,630. There are many challenges, which is why the Bill is so crucial in making sure that we look at early intervention a…”

“We have got to where we are now through the care review. Fran will say more about the processes. A lot of work on the care review was done with the previous Government. Since I have been the Minister, I have had multiple engagements with children and care leavers, listening to their views and their wishes, and really m…”

“Thank you, Chair. I am Janet Daby and I am the Minister for Children’s Social Care.”

“Within the previous spending review, some more money has been put towards fostering recruitment and retaining.”