John Whitby

This is an extremely welcome Bill that addresses some long-standing issues in social care and education. There are much-needed measures to ease the capacity pressures on fostering services by offering family group decision making and requiring all councils to publish a kinship offer. There are very welcome measures for hard-pressed families on school uniforms and free breakfast clubs. On behalf of care leavers, I am pleased to see the focus on Staying Close, which offers vital support in the transition from being in care to leaving care. It is very much a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs issue: unless young people have the basics in place, it is very difficult to focus on moving forward. In my limited time, I want to mention three measures that I am particularly pleased with. There are around 112,000 children currently being educated at home. Parents choose that route for a number of reasons, and I am comfortable that in most cases the decision to home-educate is taken with the child’s best interests in mind. However, there are those who choose to home-educate when difficult questions start to be asked by concerned professionals who are in regular contact with the child. As a foster carer of 25 years, I have seen the consequences of those families managing to avoid the spotlight for far too long by moving house, moving school and avoiding scrutiny. The Bill is therefore immensely positive for those particularly vulnerable children. It will mean that authorities will know where children are and they can be better monitored through the creation of the register. Children going through section 47 action can have an application to be educated at home refused by the local authority. It is worth saying, however, that parents who are home-educating children with no issues have nothing to be concerned about—I heard the Secretary of State say that just yesterday. The Bill addresses the exorbitant fees being charged by some of the large children’s placement providers. I was at the national social care conference in November 2023, when, at almost every plenary debate and presentation, someone would mention the statistic that the largest 20 providers of children’s placements collectively made £310 million in profit in 2021-22. That was all off the back of the taxpayer, all paid through our local authorities, and they felt it. The public have felt it as well, because there is simply less money to go around for everything else. Derbyshire county council’s spending on looked-after children rose from £44 million in 2015-16 to £110 million in 2023-24. That growth in spending is unsustainable and is diverting precious resources away from the children who are most in need of support and into the pockets of shareholders. I therefore welcome the fact that the Bill requires large children’s placement providers to give regular financial information to a newly created financial oversight scheme and gives the Government the power, if necessary, to cap the profits of children’s homes providers and independent fostering agencies.