The new government’s first actions for children and young people

The new Labour government has announced initial plans to address the challenges that children and young people are currently facing.   

The King’s Speech announced a Children’s Wellbeing Bill which aims to strengthen multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements for vulnerable children. The legislation is expected to deliver on Labour’s manifesto commitment on children’s social care “to ensure that all children can thrive in safe, loving homes” and we expect it to enact the aspects of the previous government’s ‘Stable Homes Built on Love’ strategy that need legislation. The government is yet to confirm how many of the commitments in the previous strategy it plans to continue with. Read our blog on the previous government’s implementation of this strategy to see its progress and what still needs to be achieved. 

Bridget Phillipson MP, the new Secretary of State for Education, is leading Labour’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and a new ministerial taskforce has been set up to work on a Child Poverty Strategy. The task force is expected to consider how to use household income, employment, housing, children’s health, childcare and education to improve children’s experiences and life chances.  

We welcome the new Minister for Children and Families, Janet Daby MP, who is responsible for children’s social care and has 15 years of experience as a social worker and has also worked as a fostering service manager. Daby’s brief is much more focused on children’s social care than that of her Conservative predecessors who had childcare, early years and SEND in their briefs. 

We are also pleased to see Daby's brief includes responsibility for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), a policy area which usually sits within the Home Office. It is not yet confirmed if the policy area has entirely been transferred to the Department for Education, but we hope this leads to more focus on the urgent needs of UASC within children’s social care. 

We’re looking forward to working with them both to ensure fostering families are fully supported, so all children and young people can thrive in care.  

In the House of Common’s general debate on education and opportunity Phillipson stated that “there can be no goal more important and more urgent than extending opportunities to our most vulnerable children, which also means reforming children’s social care.” 

In our manifesto we set out how the next government can reform children's social care and fostering. We are calling on the new government to: 

• Focus on care experienced young people, ensuring they have the stability and protection they need to maintain relationships with their families and communities. We need enough highly skilled foster families locally that can care for children where they need them. 
• Support fostering families by recognising their key role in decision making for the children they care for and treating them as equal and valued members of the team around the child. Their skills, knowledge and expertise should be respected and valued.  
• Invest and reform in the wider system supporting care experienced young people, so all families are supported at the point of need, before their needs escalate. We need a well-funded children’s social care system that truly values foster care. 

Read more in our manifesto.