B

Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 8 June 2026

Debate

Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Contribution

On the last point that my noble friend made, it is precisely because of the importance of accountability that we will work with Ofsted to ensure that the measurement of enduring relationships and the development of enduring relationships are at the heart of the inspection process. My noble friend also makes a very important point that, particularly for those young people who are in care but have already lost their most important relationships, it is not enough to simply say that is there nothing we can do to help them rebuild those. That is the reason for the announcement in the Statement about what is described as the “national sprint to roll out family finding services”. Those services do exactly what my noble friend has said: they sit down with young people, talk to them about who is now or was an important link and support in their lives, and then help them to remake those links to those people, who will support them while they are young but, as my noble friend says, will also be the people alongside them as they go into adulthood.

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