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Looked-after Children

Two minutes. Let me finish on the quality of the work force, which is at the heart of our report. The other quality is the quality of the care situation, which usually means foster carers and foster families. The people who do that job in our country and do it well are absolutely amazing. I have visited some of them individually and met others, and I know that it takes a certain kind of person, with a certain kind of dedication and a whole lot of love to do that work over a number of years for children who have no one else. There are some fantastic carers out there and they know what those children need. We know that is true: we have evidence of it and we met some of those carers, and I have certainly met some in my constituency. Those people do an extraordinary job, but there needs to be more of them. They are not well supported. The care is very patchy indeed across the 150 local authorities in our land, which is one of the great problems of care. We need to get rid of that patchiness, so that every child in every local authority can have good quality care.