Local Authority Children’s Services

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s services in local authorities.

I applied for this debate because of a 10-year-old constituent who was abused, tortured and murdered by those who should have loved and protected her. Her name was Sara.

Sara was found dead in the early hours of 10 August 2023. Her body was covered in bruises. She had a traumatic head injury, human bite marks and multiple broken bones, and she had been burned by a domestic iron. Next to Sara’s body, the police found plastic bags, packing tape and a cricket bat, all with Sara’s blood on them. The people who did that to Sara deserve a special place in hell. Sara’s death was not a one-off tragedy; it was the most extreme and horrific consequence of children’s services being hollowed out, fragmented and weakened over the years. Surrey county council is failing children left, right and centre.

Another example is what happened to my constituent Julia. She and her husband pleaded with Surrey county council for help with their daughter, Eloise, who had special educational needs. Surrey ignored those pleas and refused to give Eloise special educational needs and disabilities support, and eventually it took the parents to court because it was concerned that they were a safeguarding risk to their daughter. The court saw through that and sided with the parents. It said that it was Surrey’s lack of support for special educational needs that was failing the child, not the parents. Appallingly, Surrey tried to cover up its problems with special educational needs provision and push it on to a safeguarding failure.

Judith, another of my Woking constituents, was breaking up with her partner following many incidents of domestic and child abuse. She feared for her children’s safety if they continued to see their father. On the advice of Surrey county council, the family court gave the father visitation rights, and heartbreaking abuse followed. The court then took away the father’s right to see the children. That is why we need to end the presumption in favour of parental contact. Abusers should not care for their children. Surrey now insists that the father start seeing the children again. It says that it has a duty to explore whether contact would be safe by reintroducing the children to him. It looks like Surrey is rolling the dice and creating situations in which children can be harmed. This is supposed to be one of the most affluent areas of the country, and yet this is what our services—the services for my most vulnerable constituents—are like.

The day before Sara was murdered, Surrey’s children’s services turned up at the wrong house due to an administrative error. In another case, the council failed to show up to a promised meeting about a child’s care. As a result, the child did not get the support they needed—there are real-life consequences for Surrey’s incompetence.

In November 2025, the child safeguarding practice review that I called for into Sara’s murder was finally released, and it confirmed exactly what I feared: the state, and especially Surrey county council, failed Sara at every stage. All the warning signs were there, but they were not acted upon. The authorities were fully aware that Sara was at risk. She was placed on a child protection plan before her birth, yet was a victim of domestic abuse from that day onwards. Surrey social workers wanted to take her away from her father, but they changed their mind, and the consequences will haunt us all.

After Sara’s murder, the senior officer responsible for children’s services at Surrey county council, Rachael Wardell, was offered and accepted a pay rise of £8,700. I do not know how that woman can sleep at night. It sends a message that failure carries no consequences; in fact, it is rewarded.

The safeguarding review highlighted that there were national issues as well. Children’s services in one in five local authorities across the country are not good enough, according to Ofsted. There is a range of spending across local authorities. York spends £35 million and its children’s services are rated outstanding, but just down the road, Bradford—which, I admit, is slightly larger—spends £262 million and its children’s services are rated as inadequate.

My hon. Friend is speaking about very serious issues, and I commend him for not apportioning blame to one side or the other; he understands that, in different circumstances, there are different reasons to blame. The Government’s removal of the funding uplift for the most remote authorities will have an effect on children’s services, as it will on SEND provision and a whole range of council services. In Somerset, for example, it is 53% more expensive to provide home-to-school transport than in an average authority, yet the funding uplift has been removed. Does he agree that that is a shocking way to treat our most remote authorities?

I do. Funding is an issue; I am concerned that we are not properly resourcing our children’s services departments. The Government’s recent decision to shift funding away from rural constituencies like my hon. Friend’s could have a dramatic impact, and the Government need to recognise that in different parts of the country, there are different funding challenges. Obviously, a suburban-urban seat like mine has challenges, but it will clearly be easier and cheaper to travel around than his.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an important speech on behalf of his most vulnerable constituents. Does he agree that rural and sparsely populated authorities can deliver good-quality children’s services only if special educational needs provision, health integration and transportation are treated as national responsibilities and not afterthoughts, as they so often are? On the funding piece, Westmorland and Furness council is receiving funding of £535 per head this year. In three years’ time, it will be £380 per head—a 29% cut in three years. Does he share my fear that that puts the safety of our children, particularly our most vulnerable ones, at risk?

I completely agree, and that is why I called for this debate. We are not spending enough on vulnerable children, and that funding cut in Westmorland is absolutely shocking.

I highlighted the example of York and Bradford, which are two cities in the same region. We need to end the postcode lottery on the lives of children. Children should not be living with that abuse, neglect and fear, but in the awful situations where they are, we need local authority children’s services to have their back and step in to protect them.

Nowhere is that failure more despicable than in Conservative-run Surrey county council. My county council’s children’s services were rated good by Ofsted in March 2025—a decision that many fellow MPs, constituents and people across Surrey find bonkers. This “good” rating is clearly a thin veneer that covers up the rot within. Sixty-six local authorities in England are rated good. Based on what I know and what I have just said about Surrey, if that is good, what on earth is happening in the rest of the country? The Children’s Commissioner has been clear about this: her research shows huge regional disparities in child in need plans. In some areas, children receive early intervention and regular check-ups. In others, we see pointless bureaucracy, long waits and a revolving door of social workers who are poorly trained and supported.

Children’s services in local authorities cannot protect children because of significant loopholes in the home education system, as highlighted by Sara’s safeguarding review. It proved that Sara’s murderers used those loopholes to hide the abuse. When they could no longer hide the abuse from the school, Sara’s father and stepmother took her out of school, saying that they would homeschool her. The school could do nothing about that. The abuse continued—and there were tragic consequences.

The Liberal Democrats have long campaigned for a homeschool register to ensure that we know where the hundreds of homeschooled children across the country are and that they are safe. Some of them have never attended school—not once. We need a register of children not in school. That is backed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and by the Children’s Commissioner, who have said that it would be an important step and tool to keep children safe.

Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate. Clearly, there are quite a few Members so, on the basis of what I have seen, I ask Members to speak for four to five minutes—an informal application of a time limit—and we will see how we get on.

Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Western. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for representing his constituents so well in this debate, and in particular, given the horror story that he shared, I express my condolences to Sara’s family.

Colleagues may have heard York’s story, but those who have not are about to hear it. The hon. Member for Woking was right to say that York moved from the position of “requires improvement” to “outstanding” in one go. I have to point out to the Minister that our local authority has the lowest level of funding per capita after the fair funding review, which does not seem fair at all because we are not the most affluent place by far.

The catalyst for the change in York comes down to two people: Martin Kelly, the director of children’s services, and his deputy, Danielle Johnson. I pay tribute to them. If hon. Members want to learn about York’s journey and the outstanding achievements that have occurred, the director and his deputy are open to dialogue. At the heart of the change was a new practice model with a committed workforce. We moved from 45 agency staff to zero, on the basis that if someone was not committed to the service and the children, they had no place in the authority. A pioneering approach puts children at the heart, builds on co-production, innovates for change and evidences practice. Through reform, costs have been cut by £7 million. Through co-ordination across services, the local authority has built stability and made a difference to every child.

We are desperate to do more—to reshape services, drive change and press ahead with transformations. The model moves from transactional to relational, risk avoidance to risk management, safe certainty to safe uncertainty—that is just about being honest about risk—and short-term interventions to long-term outcomes. Every decision has the child at its centre and considers the long-term implications of each decision, developing resilience all the time. Its strength-based approach seeks out every opportunity for the child and is summed up,

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. As of March 2025, nearly nine in 10 London councils were rated good or outstanding for children’s services. By contrast, in the south-west of England, the figure is barely half that.

Children’s services in Devon have faced serious challenges over recent years and in May 2025, Ofsted’s full inspection of Devon county council’s children’s services judged the service to be inadequate overall. That means that too many children experiencing neglect or abuse did not receive timely or effective help, too many plans drifted, and too many care leavers did not get consistent support.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) and I agree with almost all of what he said. For me, I want to make it plain that I would not criticise the people working in children’s services, because I feel that individual social workers are a bit like goalkeepers: all too often, rather than praising their work for the children they save, we condemn and lambast the individuals who have cases where things go wrong. Yes, there is failure, and yes, there are real errors of judgment at the local authority level, but my sense is that the fault and the blame—indeed, the sin that my hon. Friend points to—lie with the perpetrators.

Devon’s position is serious, but it is not static. In formal correspondence with Devon county council in December 2025, the Minister for Children and Families set out the Government’s position on the progress being made in improving children’s services in Devon. He explicitly noted the “improving picture” and the

“increasing evidence of improvement to social work practice”,

linked to stronger prioritisation and support from corporate and political leadership. He also pointed to Ofsted’s recent monitoring work, which recognised that

Somerset council tells me that providers of residential homes for children in care can charge as much as £8,000 to £15,000 per week for one child, because they know that the council will have no other choice. Somerset council, however, is making good progress with its non-profit Homes and Horizons partnership. Does my hon. Friend agree that, to tackle profiteering companies, councils need more support to disrupt the market that provides residential homes?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. His situation is similar to ours: in Devon, it is reckoned that those profiteering companies make a complete packet. Local Government Association analysis suggests that 20 of the largest independent children’s social care providers in England took in about £1.6 billion in fees in 2021-22. Roughly 19% of that—about £310 million—was recorded as profit. Plainly, there is too much money leaving this sector and not doing the right thing for children.

Devon’s children’s services are improving, but Devon’s children deserve services that are not just improving but consistently good, and moving towards outstanding.

The four to five minutes was not kept to as tightly as I would have hoped, so we will have to go to a formal four minutes for speeches because of the number of Members who have indicated that they wish to speak.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I commend the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for the compassionate way that he spoke, and the dignity that he brought to Sara’s memory. When we have to speak about horrific cases in this place, it can go one of two ways, and I think that he did justice to the young woman today.

Stoke-on-Trent city council is often at the top of league tables that councils would wish to be at the bottom of, and at the bottom of league tables that they would wish to be at the top of. That is a structural failing that we have had for many years, and our children’s services are no different. Although they were rated inadequate in 2019, they now require improvement to be good, and that is partly because of the leadership that has been shown since the 2013 local elections. It is normally us and Hartlepool that are No. 1 in terms of the number of children in care as an absolute number, but also per capita—per 10,000. It is a financial drain on our council, which the Minister has been made aware of, not least because I have told him.

This year, one in three pounds that the council spends will be spent on children’s services. Compared with our statistical neighbours, 1,086 children in care is a phenomenally large number. It is an anomaly that we cannot get to the bottom of. At this point, I want to commend the work of our chief executive at the council, Jon Rouse, who has worked nationally on these issues and has deployed as many techniques as we can muster to get that number down, but it has remained stubbornly high. It fluctuates around 1,000, but that just means that we are spending millions of pounds on children in care at a time when money is tight.

The Government have helped; since the 2023-34 budget—if the Government sign off on this year’s request—the council will have received around £70 million of exceptional financial support to balance the budget, to deal with the overspend driven exclusively by the demand in children’s services. We cannot work out why so many young people are being put into the care system. Our city does have poverty—a lot of places have poverty—and social capital is not high. We are not that dissimilar to our statistical neighbours, and yet our numbers are significant and not coming down at the rate that we want.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this important debate. He made a powerful speech on behalf of his vulnerable constituents, and vulnerable people across the county of Surrey and beyond.

The central failing I want to highlight is this: Surrey county council—my constituency’s local authority for children’s services—repeatedly chooses not to use its statutory powers even when children are unsafe, out of education or legally entitled to support. Children and families across Guildford are feeling the consequences. Schools are often the first to spot safeguarding concerns. Headteachers and designated safeguarding leads do not raise alarms lightly. They do so because they are often the only professionals with consistent daily insight into a child’s wellbeing.

At a meeting last year, a headteacher told us that safeguarding thresholds in Surrey are far higher than in comparable authorities. Referrals stall and the council is reluctant to move from voluntary support to formal safeguarding processes. That is often justified by the family resilience model. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a strengths-based approach, but the issue is how it is applied.

One headteacher at the meeting described, with visible emotion, a child in her school showing clear signs of neglect and abuse. The headteacher followed safeguarding procedures and referred the case to Surrey but, instead of investigating, the council informed the parents that a safeguarding concern had been raised and the parents removed the child from the school. That headteacher told us that she lies awake at night not knowing where that child is or whether they are safe. That is not an isolated incident. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking referred to Sara Sharif, the most tragic example in Surrey.

Those safeguarding failures are deeply linked to failures in education. In an example from my constituency, a looked-after child is approaching a critical educational transition, but approval for an appropriate placement has been delayed because that child is in temporary accommodation outside Surrey due to a shortage of placements. Despite Surrey being the corporate parent, it treated geography as a barrier rather adapting the system. There are many other examples I could share.