We are committed to ensuring that every child has the opportunity to lead a happy, healthy life and that no child is left behind. Following unprecedented investment in the last eight years we have seen better educational attainment and more care leavers than ever before in employment or training.
Improving work force skills and capacity are key to the delivery of high quality social care. We have already announced the investment of £73 million pounds to improve the recruitment, retention and professional development of social workers. In children's homes, we are piloting a social pedagogic approach and have commissioned a training and development framework for staff. We are funding a national roll-out of the ‘Fostering Changes’ programme—a positive parenting programme for foster carers, and through the KEEP pilot projects, enabling elements of the multi-dimensional treatment foster care programme for children with complex needs to be available to foster carers more widely. Further to that, the Social Work Task Force has been established to examine social work practice and make recommendations to Government later this year for any long term reform needed in the system. We have also committed to providing a more detailed response and action plan shortly in response to Lord Laming's ‘The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report’.