Anne Longfield's response to the Government's proposals to reform children's social care

Anne Longfield, Chair of the Commission on Young Lives, responding to the Government's children's social care proposals, said:

"The Independent Review of Children's Social Care put forward a bold and ambitious plan. It set out clearly why significant reform and extra funding is needed to prevent increasingly unsustainable costs and to tackle the dysfunctional children's home 'market'.

"I welcome Government's plan to invest £200m over the next two years, and its recognition of the importance of boosting family support and kinship and foster care. However, its proposals are not yet ambitious enough to meet the enormous scale of the challenges facing the system, and the funding still falls well short of the long-term investment that is so desperately needed.

"Promises of future reform and these first stage incremental changes are important. But this will be little comfort to the thousands of children in care or on the edge of it who are not receiving the support they deserve now.

"The Independent Care Review promised a new contract of support for our most vulnerable children and families and that commitment still needs to be delivered in full."

ENDS