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Written question asked by David Drew (Labour) on Thursday, 14 December 2017, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 19 December 2017 (named day). It was answered by Robert Goodwill (Conservative) on Tuesday, 19 December 2017 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Care Leavers: Suicide

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of young people who leave care and later take their own lives; and what steps she is taking to reduce the number of young people who leave care and later take their own lives.

Answer

The department does not record data on the reason for deaths of care leavers.

We are committed to ensuring that care leavers are able to access the mental health support that they need to maintain positive emotional health and well-being. A joint Department of Health and Department for Education Expert Working Group has recently published its proposals for improving the mental health of looked after children and care leavers. A copy of their report is available at: https://www.scie.org.uk/children/care/mental-health/report.

Work to address the Expert Group’s findings is already underway. We are putting a record £1.4 billion into children and young people’s mental health and a further £3 million has been committed to support the recently published Children and Young People’s Mental Health Green Paper. We will now consider the Expert Working Group’s report in the context of the green paper with a view to taking further action.

More broadly, the government published its third progress report on preventing suicide in England in 2016, including the measures it is taking to prevent suicides among children and young people. A copy of the report is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/582117/Suicide_report_2016_A.pdf.

We published our new cross-government strategy, Keep on Caring, in July 2016 which set out the measures we will take to improve the overall outcomes for care leavers. A copy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/535899/Care-Leaver-Strategy.pdf.

The department publishes data annually on care leavers aged 17 to 21, which includes information on their main activity and whether or not they are in suitable accommodation. The latest data is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2016-to-2017.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
119570
Session
2017-19
Grouped for answer
Yes
Transferred
Yes
Subjects
Young people Suicide Care leavers
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk