Hughes Announces Chairs Of Care Working Groups
Following the publication of the Green Paper Care Matters: Transforming the Lives of Children and Young People in Care on 9 October, Minister for Children and Families, Beverley Hughes, has announced the membership of four working groups which have been set up to look at specific aspects of care.
{mosimage}Lord Herbert Laming, who led the Victoria Climbie enquiry, will chair the group looking at placement reform.
This group will develop the proposals set out in the Green Paper on radically transforming both foster and residential care.
Martin Narey, Chief Executive of Barnardos, will be responsible for chairing a group exploring the characteristics of the care population and examining the ideas in Care Matters of developing a vision of care in the future.
Dame Professor Pat Collarbone, of the Training and Development Agency, is chairing a group which will look at ways of ensuring that all children in care receive the best possible education in schools.
Professor Julian Le Grand, of the London School of Economics, is chairing the fourth group, which will examine the ideas set out in the Green Paper around ‘social care practices’: where local authorities contract independent social workers to run services for children in care.
Beverley Hughes said “I am very pleased to announce the formation of these groups, and to have secured such good chairs and membership. The members of the groups cover a range of experiences and interests and I look forward to their reports in Spring, which will enable us to take forward the vision set out in the Green Paper.”
All four working groups will publish reports on their findings in Spring 2007. The consultation on Care Matters will finish on January 15th, and the groups will have access to the responses. The full Care Matters document can be found at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations and people can respond to the consultation here. If there are particular issues that people would like to draw to the attention of one or other of the working groups, these can be sent to [email protected]
