Tag: Press Release

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 8 August 2025.

Extra £18 million injected into councils in England to roll out children’s social care reforms that prioritise earlier intervention.

Vulnerable children are to be better protected from harm after the government speeds up children’s social care reforms that prioritise prevention through its Plan for Change.

An extra £18 million will be spent on rolling out early intervention child protection reforms to councils in England to stop families from reaching crisis by strengthening leadership and speed up delivery.

The reforms include the roll out of Family Group Decision Making, an approach to involve extended family members in helping keep children at home rather than in care, and thousands more family help workers to provide earlier support for families experiencing challenges, such as substance misuse or poor mental health.

It comes after funding for this vital work has already been doubled to £523 million compared to last year, with a further commitment to increase funding by at least £300 million over the next two years.

Plans are also progressing to test the NHS number as a unique identifier to help piece data together across frontline health, schools and police services to detect concerns about children before they escalate.

A pilot between Wigan Council and NHS England is live and testing linking their systems to use the NHS number as the unique identifier.  This will then be assessed to see how efficiently it helps to share information about safeguarding concerns with children before rolling it out further.

The identifier will ensure there is a more joined up and less piecemeal approach that ensures frontline safeguarding professionals share concerns about a child as early as possible to provide a holistic picture of when they may be, or are at risk of harm, before it escalates even further.

These updates mark significant progress in delivering key measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the biggest piece of safeguarding legislation in a generation.

Children and Families Minister Janet Daby:

Time and again we’re told how failing to share information and intervene early enough means vulnerable children fall through the cracks.

These deep-rooted problems are symptomatic of a children’s social care system that has clearly been stretched to breaking point.

We’re putting an end to sticking plaster solutions through our Plan for Change by investing even more focus and funding into preventative services and information sharing.

Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution Jim McMahon OBE:

Through our Plan for Change we are getting councils back on their feet, working with local leaders to fix the foundations and rebuild the sector to deliver the vital public services local people rely on.

A key part of this involves reforming children’s social care to tackle problems at their root and give every child the best start in life.

In addition to the £523 million we are providing this year to the Families First Partnership Programme, this new £18 million from the Transformation Fund will further support local authorities and safeguarding partners to help us achieve this.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said:

Children in care told me in my Big Ambition survey they want the same things as other children: love, safety and stability in their family life. It’s absolutely right that we prioritise supporting families earlier on when challenges arise, with the goal of keeping them together safely.

I welcome this investment in caring for children and families but also in strengthening leadership locally, because my research has shown that decisions about children in care are too often driven by local capacity and resources, instead of what’s right for those children’s needs.

The introduction of a unique ID for every child will help identify problems early on and prevent any child becoming invisible to services, so robust and effective implementation will be essential, using evidence of what does and doesn’t work through this first pilot.

The latest announcements help to deliver on key measures in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, including:

• A unique number for every child – in the same way every adult has their own national insurance number – to join up systems and make sure no child falls through the cracks. A consistent identifier will allow those responsible for the safeguarding and welfare of children to better join relevant data and identify children who will benefit from additional support.
• Improved information sharing between agencies through a new information sharing duty to make sure that data that should be shared for safeguarding reasons, is shared.
• Rolling out Family Help reforms which will ensure children, young people and families experiencing multiple and complex challenges, including substance misuse or poor mental health, receive wraparound support and protection at the earliest opportunity before problems get worse.
• Requiring all local authorities to offer Family Group Decision Making – a service that brings extended family members together to keep children with families rather than entering care.
• Making sure every council operates best practice ‘multi-agency’ safeguarding panels, that bring together all the professionals that can best make sure children are kept safe both inside and outside the home.

It comes hand-in-hand with the government rolling out Best Start Family Hubs across every local authority to support 500,000 more children. The hubs will act as a one stop shop for parents seeking a range of support, including on difficulty breastfeeding, housing issues or children’s early development and language, reassuring families that they have convenient access to support in their local area or can be efficiently connected to specialist local services.

It also comes on top of £555m that was announced at the Spending Review to deliver children’s social care reforms and £560 million to refurbish and expand children’s homes, bringing the total investment to over £2 billion.

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 7 August 2025.

School attendance in England has surged, with 5 million more days in classrooms and 140,000 fewer persistently absent pupils.

Children across England are returning to school in record numbers, with over 5 million more days in classrooms this year – signalling the biggest year-on-year improvement in attendance for a decade.

New figures show more than 140,000 fewer pupils are persistently absent compared to last year, as the government’s relentless focus on tackling the inherited school attendance crisis begins to pay dividends.

Of those, 45,000 are young people from deprived backgrounds, reflecting particular improvement among disadvantaged children.

The dramatic improvement means teachers have saved over 10,000 days that would have been spent helping absent pupils catch up, freeing them to focus on delivering excellent education to whole classes.

Spending more time in school boosts learning outcomes for children, but it’s also about making friends and having new experiences, helping them to achieve and thrive. It also has a huge impact on children’s future chances in life.  With a single day out of school costing an estimated £750 in lost earnings across the course of a career for a typical student, this year’s progress alone will protect over £2bn in pupils’ future earnings and building the skilled workforce needed to drive economic growth.

The attendance breakthrough demonstrates the start of a fundamental shift in classrooms across the country, with attendance improving in all regions, as more children get back into the habit of attending every day.

The department is already making progress through our Plan for Change and this year has delivered major upgrades to school and LA-level data. This puts AI-powered reports into the hands of schools so they can benchmark their attendance against schools in similar circumstances to tackle attendance issues head on, alongside significantly expanding our pilot mentors scheme to directly target young people who need more support.

This builds on the government’s wider approach to tackle the root causes of absence, including rolling out free breakfast clubs in every primary school, expanding access to mental health support in schools, and ensuring earlier intervention for pupils with special educational needs.

Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson said:

The record improvement in school attendance shows we are turning the tide on a crisis that saw a generation go missing from England’s schools.

Getting children back in classrooms, where they belong, is non-negotiable if we are to break the unfair link between background and success so we can build a fairer country – a cornerstone of our Plan for Change.

When we tackle attendance head-on, everyone benefits – pupils get the consistent education they deserve, teachers can focus on driving up standards, and we build the stronger workforce our economy needs.

With fewer children missing crucial learning, pupils are more likely to develop the consistent study habits, knowledge and social skills that will serve them whether they progress to apprenticeships, colleges or universities.

The attendance gains sit alongside for the government’s mission to ensure 75% of five-year-olds reach key development milestones by 2028, recognising that regular school attendance from the earliest years creates the foundation for lifelong success.

To go further, new attendance and behaviour hubs will work nationwide to support more than 5,000 schools a year in tackling absence, while specialist attendance mentors are working directly with 10,000 of the most vulnerable children over the next three years to remove barriers to attending school.