§ Dame Jill KnightTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what assessment she has made of the working of the Children Act 1989 as it relates to young persons leaving local authority care;
695W(2) what reports she has prepared under section 83(6) of the Children Act 1989 relating to research and returns of information.
§ Mr. YeoWe are closely monitoring how local authorities are exercising their powers and duties under the Act as a whole, including their responsibilities to young people leaving care. This has been achieved through special commissioned research, new statistical returns and a number of surveys, including a national monitoring survey of all local authorities undertaken by the social services inspectorate. Information derived from these sources will form the basis of the Government's first report to Parliament on the working of the Act in England and Wales. We expect to publish the report next month.
There will be a further response under section 83(6) later in 1993 which will draw more extensively on the regular statistical sources and provide the first in the statistical abstracts reporting the position after the Act was implemented. These will replace the reports covering children in care of local authorities for periods before the Act was implemented. The report of the year ending 31 March 1990 was published in July 1992 under section 83(6) and the last of these reports, for the year ending 31 March 1991, will be published this week under section 83(6).
§ Dame Jill KnightTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will take steps to ensure that all young people leaving local authority residential care are monitored until social services departments are confident they are housed and able to manage by themselves.
§ Mr. YeoLocal authorities have a statutory duty under the Children Act 1989 to prepare all children for the time when they are to leave care, and have a range of powers and duties to provide aftercare support to care leavers who seek their help. Comprehensive guidance has been issued on ways in which these powers and duties might best be exercised. The implementation of the Act will continue to be kept under review.
§ Mr. HeppellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children in care have been child migrants in each year from 1967 up until the present; from which areas of the country they came; and what countries were their destinations.