Speeches by Daby.

“You could invite her to come and speak to you. I am sure she delighted to do that and she will be able to speak about the work that she is doing, the areas that she is focused on and how she is working with Government as well.”

“We have kinship leave within the Department for Education. This is an area that we think is quite crucial. We are looking at and focusing on it and I am sure Fran can say a bit more about it.”

“People becoming kinship carers will be a very minimal number of people when you think about their employment and would have a very small impact on an organisation or employers. However, we recognise that kinship leave is very important.”

“I think we are at the first step. We started within the Department with what we are trying to do and have begun to do. Where I feel we have made a big splash with kinship carers is that we will carry on reviewing and looking at what more needs to be done in this space to support kinship carers.”

“We have come into Government and we have inherited this situation that you have outlined, where there are areas of focus and areas of need. I believe that these areas can be addressed. I have met with Adoption England. We fund Adoption England as well. It recognises the areas we have suggested where it needs to act and…”

“I am aware of the uncertainty and the insecurity that that is causing, because obviously the announcement has not been made. The announcement will be made very soon about the adoption and special guardianship funding. As soon as that information is available, it will be made known. I absolutely understand, I hear, I do…”

“I have met with a few adoption organisations and the issue around support in school often comes up because of the early years trauma and teachers needing to recognise this and to make sure that the understanding is there for the children in school. I am already looking at this as an area to see what more we can do, whe…”

“It is a very good question. We recognise we need to build more and we are encouraging local authorities to do that, to identify spaces and places for open children’s homes. We are looking at 200 and it would be the local authorities that would identify the areas and make that known to the Department. They will be manag…”

“Yes.”

“The local authorities are very energised generally around this because they recognise that they need children’s homes and children’s provisions. They are working with the Department on that. We have had many local authorities that have already started to put forward their ideas and their bids and ways in which they can…”

“What you have described is absolutely right. Ofsted has been tasked with registering provisions that are unregistered but not the provisions like the barges and the unsuitable types of provisions we are talking about. If they are in a children’s home that is not registered, they have been tasked with registering every …”

“The local authorities make the decision as to where they place children and they find themselves in some very difficult and tight situations. The task is for the local authority to make sure they have the right provision, they place children in the right provision from the get-go, day one. Ofsted absolutely need to mak…”

“I think you raise a good point and, as a constituency MP myself, I have come up against a situation where respite is needed but respite placement has not been identified. That puts an additional strain and struggle on the family, an unnecessary stress, I think you are absolutely right. We do have challenges, I have to …”

“Of the money that has been put towards foster care, I believe there has been an uplift of around £11 million for fostering. I will pass on to Fran with some of the details around the money but there is a—”

“Within the previous spending review, some more money has been put towards fostering recruitment and retaining.”

“We have lots of avenues in which somebody could be trained to become a qualified social worker, but we absolutely recognise that we need to recruit and retain social workers. We have recently had some very pleasing and encouraging statistics on social work and, in sharing that with you, we have had the highest number o…”

“We don’t want children to go to school hungry.”

“The plan is that where it is recognised by any of the agencies that the child or the family come into communication with—usually the school—they have a corporate parenting responsibility to draw attention to that. This is why the family hubs process is so key in getting this right, to make sure that we can put in the p…”

“We need to review and we need to carry on monitoring to make sure it is achieving its aims. I am due to meet with NSPCC as well, so I will take that up with it.”

“We don’t want any children to experience any significant harm or to be at risk of harm. The reason why we have brought in the areas we have done within the Bill is to ensure that we have other Departments that are key players playing their part, making sure they are putting all of the protective factors in place and ac…”