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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-03-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to continue to permit civil society organisations to submit complaints to the Office of the Schools Adjudicator.

Nick Gibb

On 25 January 2016, we announced our intention to limit who may refer objections to the Schools Adjudicator to local parents and local authorities. This intention has not changed.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-03-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what financial support her Department has provided to fostering services in each year from 2011 to 2015; and how much that funding was for looked after child in each of those years.

Edward Timpson

Local authority (LA) funding for the provision of children’s services, including fostering services, is provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. However, LAs are required to submit annual budget and outturn statements about their actual spending to the Secretary of State for Education.

The total LA expenditure on looked after children (including fostering), based upon the section 251 out turn statements, are set out below for each financial year between

2011 – 2015:

	2011-12 (£000s)	2012-13 (£000s)	2013-14 (£000s)	2014-15 (£000s)
Looked After Children	£3,383,664	£3,495,626	£3,661,327	£3,768,523
Fostering	£1,376,869	£1,477,678	£1,515,352	£1,540,324

Since the introduction of the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme in October 2013, the Department is funding the following programmes relating to supporting fostering:

The £100 million Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme is currently supporting 53 projects in the development, testing and spreading of more effective ways of supporting children and families who need help from children’s social care services. The programme is providing funding to projects which have elements that support foster services including matching, specialist foster placements and foster family support and training.

Achieving for Children (£1.1 m) to develop a new approach to supporting adolescents in, and on the edge of, care across the two boroughs of Richmond and Kingston. This will draw together specialist fostering placements, a children’s home and a family intervention team using a new, consistent training programme ‘Better by Design’ across all of these elements.

Action for Children (up to £3.3m) to work with Barnet, Harrow and Hounslow councils to run a suite of evidence based programmes (functional family therapy, multi-systemic therapy and multi-dimensional treatment foster care) to transform the support available to adolescents in West London.

The Fostering Network (£1.6m) to import and adapt the successful mockingbird family model of fostering from the US to the UK. Mockingbird clusters a group of 10 foster carers around a ‘hub’ home. This hub, led by an experienced foster carer, provides respite support and short breaks to the carers in the cluster. All of the carers receive shared training and the carers and young people within a cluster meet regularly, engage in activities and get to know and support each other.

The National Implementation Service (£4.1m) to hot-house, test and build the sustainability of evidence-based interventions in the UK – including multi-systemic therapy and RESuLT (a therapeutic training programme for residential care staff). Four sites have been specially funded to implement KEEP Safe, a training and support programme for foster carers who look after teenagers.

Match Fostercare (£781k) to take on delegated statutory social work responsibilities for children in foster care from several local authorities. They believe this will reduce duplication and bureaucracy and provide a better service to children.

NSPCC (£1m) to introduce the New Orleans intervention model in South London. The model aims to transform delivery and joint commissioning in children’s social work and CAMHS teams in relation to children aged 0 to 5 years who are in foster care due to maltreatment.

Sheffield and South Yorkshire Councils (£1.2m) to develop a sub-regional delivery model for young people experiencing or at risk of child sexual exploitation. This will include recruitment, development and support of specialist foster carers to provide safe placements for young people across South Yorkshire. Local authorities involved are Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster. Other partners are LSCBs in these areas and South Yorkshire police.

Further details about these and other Innovation Programme funded projects can be found here:

http://springconsortium.com/projects-being-funded/

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-03-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 29 February 2016 to Question 27311, where in the Chief Schools Adjudicator’s annual reports the information sought can be found.

Nick Gibb

Data on the number of objections referred to the Schools Adjudicator and their outcome can be found on page 20 of the Chief Schools Adjudicator’s annual report for 2014/15, available here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/osa-annual-report.

The Adjudicator does not publish data broken down by category of objector.

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