The Education Secretary has pledged an extra £547million to keep families together and stop kids being put into care, saying: “Every child deserves to grow up in a safe home and a loving family.”
Bridget Phillipson has told how she is haunted by her time working with women and children fleeing domestic violence and vowed to tackle the problem.
The Education Secretary, 41, revealed she worked in a women’s refuge after finishing her Modern History degree at Oxford University. Now, after the Gateshead-born Labour MP unveiled plans to pledge an extra £547million to keep families together and stop kids being put into care, she said: “Every child deserves to grow up in a safe home and a loving family.”
Writing exclusively for the Mirror, she said: “Growing up on a tough street in the north east of England, I saw the damage of inaction firsthand. And when I came back after university, I worked for a local refuge for women and children fleeing domestic violence. The pain and suffering I witnessed has stayed with me ever since – and now I’m determined to build a stronger system to support families and keep children safe.”
The government is boosting funding for a programme designed to keep families together and stop kids being put into care. An extra £547million of new funding has been confirmed over the next three years, bringing the total budget for the Families First Partnership to £2.4billion.
The programme is a major reform of the children’s social care system in England. The aim is to create local support systems that put children and families at the centre and provide consistent, responsive help. Ms Phillipson said: “Delivering that secure foundation of a happy childhood – especially for disadvantaged children – is a major motivation for me.
“It’s why strong families sit at the centre of this government’s Plan for Change. And make no mistake, change is what we need. Up until this point, too many families have been left to reach crisis point before they get the help they need. The focus was on picking up the pieces post-crisis, rather than backing families early on with the right support. It was the kind of sticking plaster politics that plagued our country for years.”
She added: “We’re driving a radical shift in how children’s services are delivered on the front line – child-centred, designed with families and communities, not imposed upon them. And we’re putting family decision making at the heart of the care system too, so that more children can live safely at home or transition into kinship care.
“Across the board we need to build strong relationships between families and trusted professionals, with support that adapts as needs change. That’s true of families – and it’s true of communities too. Local authorities will now have the freedom and the funding to build services that reflect their communities’ needs. But we aren’t doing this alone or starting from scratch.
“Our reforms build on the excellent work which social workers, police, health, education and other practitioners do. We’ll work together, drawing on their expertise. That’s the coordinated action we need so that vulnerable children aren’t passed from pillar to post, lost in faceless bureaucracy.
“Across the sector there are dedicated professionals who go to work every morning determined to make this country a better place. I know they’ll rise to this moment, seize this opportunity to support families and keep children safe. For too long, they’ve been left to struggle, fighting for families with one hand tied behind their back. We know that to back families, we’ve got to back our workforce, which is why we are providing funding to support them and the framework for a real culture shift in child safeguarding.”