Paul Waugh

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will certainly pass that on to the Minister for children and families. He is right that we need the capacity to match the requirements that we are imposing. My hon. Friend’s last point, which was about the impact of regional care co-operatives on improving sufficiency and co-ordination, is really important. We now have seven regional care co-operatives covering more than 100 local authorities, including his own, Staffordshire, through the west midlands partnership. I can confirm that regional care co-operatives are not simply about increasing placement capacity; as we have heard tonight, children in care can be involved with multiple services, across local authorities, health and justice, so co-ordinated regional planning and partnership working is a core requirement for these new regional care co-operatives. By bringing these partners together to forecast need and commission care more strategically, regional care co-operatives will help ensure that provision and wider support are better joined up around children’s needs—a point that my hon. Friend was right to make repeatedly. We should be focusing on the child; all the services around them should be child-centred. I recognise the concerns about the distribution of children’s homes across England. They are legitimate, and they are shared cross-party. Some areas have a disproportionally high concentration of homes, while others have insufficient provision. That can contribute to children being placed further away from their support networks and can lead to poor outcomes. We know that can be driven by a focus on maximising profits; some providers are attracted by lower property costs. We know for sure that this is happening in the north, and in the west midlands. We are taking action to reshape the children’s social care market and improve placement sufficiency to combat those problems. Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, we are rebalancing the market, increasing transparency, and helping local authorities to secure the placements that children need. We want the right homes in the right places, so that children, when it is in their best interests, are kept close to their communities. Our aim is to support provision where there is a clear need and the children’s needs can be fully met. We are also providing significant capital funding to deliver 540 new placements in local authority-owned children’s homes by March 2029, in 75 authorities. Two hundred will be specialist placements for children at risk of deprivation of liberty; 237 are already completed, registered and operational. Several Members have mentioned the work that we are leading on fostering reforms to ensure that as few children as possible need to enter care in the first place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) rightly pointed out, there should be respite support for foster parents, but all too often, it is not there. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in the Chamber, was right to say that we should be removing the practical barriers to fostering. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase has personal experience of the impact of being a foster carer, and I want to put on record our thanks to him and all the foster parents who do such a marvellous job, day in, day out, and week in, week out, with some of the most vulnerable children in society. We owe them a deep debt of gratitude. In March last year, 67% of all children looked after in England were living with foster families, but 46% of those children were placed out of their local area. That is why the Government have launched the fostering action plan that my hon. Friend mentioned. We are committed to creating 10,000 more foster places during this Parliament. The plan includes an England-wide recruitment campaign—I hope that Members have already read about it—which is challenging the myths that prevent people from considering fostering, and recruiting thousands more foster carers who can give children the loving, stable homes that they need and deserve. The plan is backed by an £88 million investment over two years, which includes funds for the expansion of dedicated regional foster carer recruitment hubs; support to enable foster carers to adapt their homes, so that they can care for more children; an increase in the number of Mockingbird peer-support clusters, which I know are greatly valued across the country; and the launch of a fostering innovation programme to support better outcomes for children. We know that the best way to keep children safe and give them the best possible start in life is to support families before problems reach crisis point. Our “families first for children” pathfinders have tested that approach in 10 local authorities, bringing together earlier, more intensive family help, expert multi-agency child protection and wider family networks to identify problems sooner and help children to remain safely within their families, whenever that is in their best interests. We are now applying those lessons nationally through the families first partnership programme, backed by £2.4 billion over the next three years, including £853 million in 2026-27. This represents a fundamental shift towards prevention, strengthening families and ensuring that when serious safeguarding concerns arise, children benefit from co-ordinated expertise across agencies. Let me again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase for bringing this important matter to the House, and reiterate the Government’s aim that every child in care should receive the same joined-up support, stability and opportunity that we would want for our own children. We recognise that local and national Government, health and education authorities, and every partner must work together for each child in our care. I know that my colleague the Minister for children and families—who has done such marvellous work in this regard, both inside and outside Government—will continue to push through the reforms we have discussed this evening, which the system needs so urgently, so that children are safe, supported, close to the people and places that matter to them most, and able to thrive. Question put and agreed to.