Family Practice Press

Putting Children First

Dear Julian

Dear Julian

I am writing on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education to thank you for your email of 5 December about the death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and concerns around the social care system.

I was saddened to read about your son, and can only imagine how distressing this must have been for you.

These are horrific and deeply disturbing cases and we are closely reviewing the circumstances in which they occurred. No child should ever suffer in the way that these children did and our Ministers are determined to get to the truth, expose what went wrong and take any action necessary to protect children.

The Secretary of State has asked the National Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to deliver a single, national, independent review of Arthur’s death to identify lessons learned from this tragedy. We have also commissioned a Joint Targeted Area Inspection to examine how all the relevant local agencies are working together. Together, these two actions will mean a deep, independent look at Arthur’s case and will determine how we can better keep children safe both nationally and locally.

In addition, in January, we launched the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, delivering on the Government’s manifesto commitment to look at the care system, ensuring that children and young adults get the support they need. We look forward to the Review’s recommendations in spring 2022.

We are already investing heavily to help the dedicated professionals on the frontline deliver the care that every child deserves. Since the Spending Review in 2019, there have been year-on-year real terms increases for local government. This year, councils have access to £51.3 billion of core spending power – including a £1.7 billion grant for social care – and core spending power will increase in real terms by an average of 3% each year of the next spending review period.

We are supporting families and children across the country to get the best start in life by investing £500 million over the next three years to transform our ‘Start for Life’ and family help services.

Throughout the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we have done our utmost to ensure that vulnerable children and young people have been kept safe and well. We kept schools open for vulnerable children and provided funding of £6 billion directly to councils to support them with the pressures arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, including in children’s social care. We also provided funding to children’s charities so that they could continue to provide services that safeguarded vulnerable children and protected them from harm.

Sadly, we know that, despite the best efforts of practitioners working with children and families, some abuse and neglect continues to go undetected by statutory agencies. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including:

    1. failures to report or share information properly;

 

    1. failure to perceive abuse or understand the nature and level of the risk of harm faced by children;

 

    1. in some cases, malicious and wilful concealment of abuse.

Overall, we recognise that child protection is extremely complex and that social workers do their best every day to support and protect children in what are very difficult jobs. Social workers assess risk and make complex decisions, balancing a wide range of factors. Together, the National Review and the Joint Targeted Area Inspection will make sure that we learn from Arthur’s death what needs to be changed nationally and that we can understand and strengthen local work to safeguard children.

Thank you for writing about this important matter.

 

Your correspondence has been allocated reference number 2021-0051795. If you need to respond to us, please visit https://www.education.gov.uk/contactus and quote your reference number.

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Thank you for your help.

Yours sincerely

D BIRKETT
Ministerial and Public Communications Division
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