Providing support for families at an earlier stage, before needs escalate to crisis point, is critical and we are working with Adoption England to achieve this.

Adoption England are working with their local authority partner safeguarding teams to improve the support adopted families receive when they are in crisis. This includes developing a national protocol which can be used for all adoption support services teams in regional adoption agencies and local authority front door safeguarding services.

We have provided funding of £8.8 million to Adoption England to improve adoption services, including support to adoptive families This includes implementing a new framework for an early support core offer which covers the first 12 to 18 months after placement.

This financial year the department has also invested £50 million into the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund to ensure that adopted children can access therapeutic services which help stabilise placements and address complex needs.

The Department has made no assessment of the cost to the National Health Service of identifying, sourcing, and distributing medications for emergency prescriptions.

Prescriptions issued on an emergency basis to patients are not treated any differently to regular prescriptions.

For the purposes of reporting to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the DHSC Reporting Requirements for Medicines Shortages and Discontinuations guidance document states that a supply shortage of a presentation of health service medicine occurs when supply does not meet patient demand at a national level, irrespective of whether it applies to the entire United Kingdom, or only to one or more of England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland as individual UK nations. However, we have a variety of escalation routes, and we will investigate issues on a case-by-case basis regardless of whether they fit this definition.

The Government recognises the significant pressures that councils are facing. This Spending Review provides over £5 billion of new grant funding over the next three years for local services that communities rely on. The Government is committed to ensuring that funding is targeted effectively at the places and services that need it most and allocated in a way that empowers local leaders to deliver against local priorities. This includes committing to multi-year allocations for each council through the upcoming 2026-27 Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) and moving to a more up-to-date assessment of each council’s needs and resources.

Councils are responsible for their own financial management, and the department does not monitor their day-to-day business. Any council that has concerns about its ability to set or maintain a balanced budget should approach the department in the first instance.

We are committed to ensuring that looked-after children are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes. We recognise the critical importance of continuity and stability throughout a looked-after child’s life. Under the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review guidance and regulations, the child’s social worker should do everything possible to minimise disruption to their education. School changes should be minimised, and any transitions well-planned and supported. Where a change to a child’s educational arrangements is unavoidable, their personal education plan should set out arrangements to minimise disruption to education, especially during exam periods and other critical periods in their education.

The government is introducing measures, including through the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, to rebalance the market, improve regulation and commissioning of placements, and bring greater visibility to the prices local authorities are paying. This includes a focus on addressing the barriers that prevent homes from being established where they are needed.

Through our Plan for Change, we are also investing £2 billion over this Parliament to give more children a safe, loving home, including expanding the children’s home estate, delivering more foster care placements and helping keep families together by providing targeted support before problems escalate.

These measures will provide greater placement availability, stability and ensure that, where it is in a child's best interests, they are placed closer to home.

The Local Government Finance Settlement (LGFS) for the 2025/26 financial year will grant councils in England access to over £69 billion in funding, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase on the 2024/25 financial year. Decisions on allocation of funding for all local authority-delivered services, including children’s social care, are for local authorities to take based on local need, priorities and statutory duties.

In recognition of the need to ensure local authorities have the resources needed to deliver good quality children’s social care services, the LGFS for 2025/26 provides two new grants for children and family services. A new Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant is set to be introduced, which will provide £270 million of new funding for investment in additional prevention activity through the implementation of Family Help and child protection reforms. The Children and Families Grant, worth £414 million, will also be available. This will consolidate several previous departmental children’s social care grants, including £253.5 million from the former Supporting Families Programme.

The government’s investment in 2025/26 is a significant step in our ambition to rebalance the children’s social care system and will enable local authorities to move towards financial sustainability and deliver improved outcomes for children and families.

Funding for future years will be subject to phase two of the spending review.

The department does not monitor or collect data on independent schools’ finances, however these are published and publicly available for both commercial and charitable providers. Independent schools charge their own fees for education, health and care placements, and it is for the local authority to determine whether a placement offers value for money.

Independent special schools can play an important role in the special educational needs and disabilities system, particularly in meeting low-incidence needs. However, the department recognises that independent special schools have higher costs than maintained special schools and academies, both in commercial and charitable providers, and commissioners need to ensure placements are used appropriately.

It is the department’s ambition that all families have access to high-quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, giving every child the best start in life and delivering on our Plan for Change.

One of the signs of a healthy market is a range of providers offering choice and flexibility for parents. There is a vibrant mix of provision in the market, including schools, the private sector, voluntary and charitable organisations and childminders offering home-based care. The department keeps the structure of the market, and the financial health of providers, under close review.

Where a local authority identifies the need for a new school in its area, including a new special school, it must currently seek proposals to establish an academy (free school). This is known as the ‘free school presumption’. The free school presumption process is the main route by which local authorities establish new schools to meet the need for additional places.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will remove the legal presumption that all new schools are opened as academies, allowing local authorities to welcome proposals for all types of school and to put forward their own proposals, where they choose to do so. This will ensure new schools are opened by the provider with the best offer for local children and families. Ahead of the Bill receiving royal assent and coming into force, the free school presumption remains in place.

We have a complaints process that manages complaints about the interpreting service, complaints about specific interpreters, and complaints by interpreters. We are always looking to improve the efficiency of our processes. The Public Services Committee (PSC) of the House of Lords published a report into interpreting in the courts on 24 March 2025, and we are currently reviewing its recommendations about complaints. We will respond to the PSC’s report in due course.

The department knows that many local authorities have an existing family group decision making (FGDM) service in place, including many who use the family group conference model. In some local authorities, independent coordinators are recruited to facilitate or ‘chair’ FGDM meetings and, in other areas, social workers are trained to deliver the service.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the department is seeking to place a duty on local authorities to offer an FGDM meeting to all parents and those with parental responsibility whose children are on the edge of care, unless this is not in the best interests of the child. This will ensure that families have the opportunity to participate in planning and decision-making at this critical point.

As part of this, the department will be developing guidance about best practice in delivering FGDM. This will include guidance on how to ensure that facilitators of the FGDM process have the appropriate skills and training. We are conscious of the additional resources that local authorities will require to fulfil this measure, which may include recruiting or training extra staff. That is why this government has committed to an uplift of £13 million for the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant for 2025/26, which will be used to support the rollout of FGDM across the country for all families on the edge of care. This money can be used to expand a local authority’s existing service, including training additional facilitators for FGDM.

We are committed to protecting young people from gambling harm. Since 2020, children and young people have been taught about the risks relating to gambling as part of the statutory Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum in England.

We are introducing a statutory levy to be paid by gambling operators raising funding for research, prevention and treatment of gambling-related harms. The levy will play an important part in the Government’s wider aim to have better informed and protected young people when it comes to gambling-related harms.

This government is determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all our young people. We will act to prevent the damage caused to the lives of young people who are not in education, employment or training. The government recognises the complex, long-standing nature of the challenge, and will make a raft of changes to tackle it.

Young people are required to continue in education or training until they turn 18. We are preventing young people from losing touch with education or employment before the age of 18 through a guaranteed place in education and training for all 16 and 17-year-olds, expanded work experience and careers advice, action to tackle school attendance and improved access to mental health services for young people in England. Over £7.5 billion in 16 to 19 programme funding will be invested during the 2024/25 academic year, to pay for education for any 16, 17 or 18-year-olds in post-16 education.

£240 million has been announced to drive forward measures in the Get Britain Working White Paper. This includes a youth guarantee for all young people aged 18-21 in England to ensure that they can access quality training, educational opportunities or help to find work. Working with Mayoral Authorities, and building on existing provision and entitlements, we will test new ways of supporting young people into employment or training. To do this, we will mobilise eight place-based youth guarantee trailblazers with £45 million of funding in 2025/26.

The comprehensive package also includes: a new national jobs and careers service to help more people into work, foundation apprenticeships to give people a new route into skilled work, Get Britain Working Plans for the economically inactive, and the launch of Skills England to open new opportunities for young people.

I pay tribute to the vital efforts of foster carers, who carry out a challenging role that requires skill, dedication and love. The government will ensure more children can receive loving care in foster families.

We will work with councils and fostering services to ensure foster carers receive the support they need and deserve. However, there are no plans to use the Employment Rights Bill to legislate on the employment status of foster carers.

My officials are working closely with officials from the Department for Education on how best to support foster carers.

The department is committed to reforming the children’s social care system so that all children can grow up in stable and loving homes. To support this, the department has recently announced that it is investing an additional £44 million in kinship and foster care.

The King’s Speech on 17 July committed to a Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which will ensure our education and children’s social care systems transform lives for millions of children and young people in England. The department will use the Bill to deliver the government’s commitment on children’s social care.

The department wants to ensure that children leaving care have stable homes, access to health services, support to build lifelong loving relationships and are engaged in education, employment and training.

The department does not currently have any plans to provide match funding to incentivise children in care to participate in the Stepladder Plus programme.

The Government is grateful for the suggestion made by the Share Foundation of a way in which HMRC could develop a system of paying out the savings held in matured Child Trust Fund (CTF) accounts that have not been accessed by the account owners by the age of 21.

This proposal is complex and could not be implemented easily, or without allocating significant resources. The savings in these accounts belong to the account owner even if they are not aware of the account’s existence. For HMRC to close these accounts, obtain the savings in those accounts and transfer them with or without the owner’s consent would require careful legal consideration. This is quite apart from the operational systems and resources across Government departments and CTF providers that would be required to monitor the transactions.

The Government is committed to reuniting all young adults with their CTFs and recognises the importance of ensuring that young adults can benefit from these funds as they reach adulthood.

To that end, HMRC continues to work with CTF providers, industry representatives and stakeholders to explore ways of increasing the profile of CTFs and enabling account owners to be aware of and trace their accounts. HMRC has ongoing work with the University and Colleges Admissions Service to encourage awareness among student peer groups and a communications plan which targets young people. HMRC has recently amended gov.uk to reference The Share Foundation’s CTF account tracing service, providing an additional way for young people to trace their accounts.

This government is committed to whole system reform of children’s social care to give hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve.

The department recognises that there is a strong evidence base for early intervention to support families to stay together and thrive, and this will be at the heart of its whole system reform of children’s social care.

This department also recognises the valuable and important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children. The government’s manifesto set out a commitment to working with local government to support children in care, including through kinship arrangements.

Through the £45 million Families First for Children pathfinder and Family Network Pilot, the government is testing the implementation of intensive whole family support in ten pathfinder local authorities. In these local authorities, multi-disciplinary teams are providing targeted support to help families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation.

These local authorities are also making greater use of family networks by involving them in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing practical and financial support via family network support packages to help keep children safe at home.

This government is committed to whole system reform of children’s social care to give hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve.

The department recognises that there is a strong evidence base for early intervention to support families to stay together and thrive, and this will be at the heart of its whole system reform of children’s social care.

This department also recognises the valuable and important role that kinship carers play in caring for some of the most vulnerable children. The government’s manifesto set out a commitment to working with local government to support children in care, including through kinship arrangements.

Through the £45 million Families First for Children pathfinder and Family Network Pilot, the government is testing the implementation of intensive whole family support in ten pathfinder local authorities. In these local authorities, multi-disciplinary teams are providing targeted support to help families overcome challenges at the earliest opportunity to prevent escalation.

These local authorities are also making greater use of family networks by involving them in decision-making at an earlier stage and providing practical and financial support via family network support packages to help keep children safe at home.

This government has been clear that absence from school is a key barrier to overcome, because if pupils are not attending school they cannot benefit from good teaching and learning.

Thanks to the efforts of the sector, there are more learners in school almost every day this year compared to last. However, with 1.6 million children still persistently absent, missing 10% of lessons or more, poor attendance remains a major challenge.

That is why the department will work with the sector to bring breakfast clubs to all primary schools, so that every child is in on time and ready to learn. The department will also introduce new annual Ofsted reviews of safeguarding, attendance, and off-rolling. The department will also tackle mental health issues among young people by providing access to specialist mental health professionals in every school.

This is in addition to activity to support schools and local authorities to tackle the school absence challenge. This includes:

• Setting clear expectations for schools, trusts and local authorities to provide a ‘support first’ approach: the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance requires schools, trusts and local authorities to work together to tackle absence and became statutory in August 2024. For those facing complex barriers to attendance, schools are asked to have sensitive conversations with children and families and work with them to put support in place for their individual needs. This guidance is attached and can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance.

• Supporting schools and local authorities to use data to target interventions: schools and local authorities can access an attendance data tool to identify and intervene where pupils are at risk of persistent absence. Sharing of attendance data has also become mandatory for all schools.

• Attendance mentors operating in five local authorities with high absence levels.

• 31 attendance hubs across the country, sharing best practice across the sector.

Wider measures such as the pupil premium, the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision improvement plan, and the holiday activities and food programme also benefit attendance.

The Government is committed to ensuring that families have the support that they need. We want to ensure that people who care for family and friends are better able to look after their own health and wellbeing.

Long-term reform is needed in social care, and we will engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including unpaid carers, to ensure their voices are heard as we develop plans to create a National Care Service. The National Care Service will be underpinned by national standards and delivered locally to ensure that everyone, including unpaid carers, is supported to live independent, dignified lives.

The Government recognises that many unpaid carers can face challenges balancing employment with caring. That is why we are committed to reviewing the implementation of carer’s leave, and examining the benefits of introducing paid carer’s leave.

We must also ensure that carers are supported by the benefits system. The Department for Work and Pensions will keep Carer’s Allowance under review to see if it meets its objectives. The previous Work and Pensions Committee made a number of recommendations for changing the rules and processes. The Government will respond to those recommendations in due course.