Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2014-06-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has contributed funds to assist local authorities in the payment of external contractors to deliver childcare services excluding fostering and adoption.

Mr Edward Timpson

Through its Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme, the Government is supporting local authorities to take new approaches to maximise the capacity and skills brought to bear in improving services for the most vulnerable children. Part of that work involves giving local authorities greater freedom to test new delivery models and harness external ideas and expertise by allowing them to delegate children’s social care functions to external providers.

In November 2013 we gave all local authorities the power to operate in this manner. So far five providers have registered with Ofsted as performing these functions on behalf of local authorities.

Local authorities also make widespread use of contractors in the provision of children’s services such as residential care and foster care.

The Government does not collect data on local authority spend on external contracts.