Outcomes for looked-after children, the effectiveness or social care placements and regulation of providers are to be examined by a House of Lords committee.
The Lords’ Public Services Committee has launched an inquiry into children’s social care to explore how services are meeting vulnerable young people’s needs and identify areas of practice that could be improved.
-
Analysis: Trends in children’s services inspection
-
Analysis: Key trends in children’s residential care
The inquiry has put forward 15 questions on a range of critical issues including factors for the rise in local authority spending on children’s social care services, the strengths and limitations of regional commissioning of residential care placements, reasons for the shortage of foster carers and the use of unregistered children’s homes.
Written evidence can be submitted to the committee until 23.59 on Monday 26 October, with findings published in the following months.
Committee chair, Lord Bradley said: “Our inquiry will examine several factors which affect the way in which the system operates. There are multiple participants in ensuring the system works effectively including local authorities, regulators, government officials and departments which we need to hear from so that we can examine in detail the issues highlighted in our call for evidence. In addition, we want to hear from stakeholder organisations and people with lived experience of the system.
“The goal of this inquiry is to explore obstacles, outcomes for care-experienced children, and consider possible solutions as well as highlighting any good practice and how that can be shared to improve the system so that it will benefit the children and young people it is meant to serve.”
The 12-member committee is chaired by Labour life peer Lord Bradley and includes former Conservative education minister Lord Jo Johnson and Liberal Democrat Baroness Caroline Pidgeon.
Source: CYPNow
