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21 Apr 2008 : Column 1528W—continued
Children in Care: Missing Persons
Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what steps the Government plan to take to address trends in the number of children going missing while in care. [199410]
Beverley Hughes: In 2002 the Government published ‘Children Missing from care and from home—a guide to good practice’. This guidance was issued along with Circular LAC (2002)17 under section 7 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970, requiring local authorities to comply with it. The guidance sets out how local authorities and their partner agencies are expected to respond when young people go missing from their care placements. It includes information about measures that local authorities should put in place to prevent children from going missing as well as on reporting incidents. One of its requirements is that each local authority must appoint a designated senior manager to be responsible for monitoring “missing from care” incidents to identify any trends and to instigate any action necessary to respond to children’s needs ensuring that they are properly safeguarded.
On 26 March we published ‘Care Matters: Time to deliver for children in care’. This sets out our intention to update and re-issue guidance to the Children Act 1989 and subsequent legislation. As part of this process we will be reviewing our 2002 guidance. This will provide us with the opportunity to consider whether in future we should include more information about how local authorities carry out their responsibilities to monitor any patterns and trends relating to children going missing from their care placements.
Children: Abuse
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many times reasonable chastisement has been used as a defence in court cases involving violence against children in each of the last 10 years. [186807]
Kevin Brennan: This information has not been collected centrally and is therefore not available for each of the last 10 years as requested. However, since July 2007 the Crown Prosecution Service area offices have been notifying the Crown Prosecution Service's Policy Directorate of any cases in which the reasonable punishment defence has been used. To date no such cases have been notified.
Children: Day Care
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what estimate he has made of the number and proportion of managers of day care settings who were male in (a) Basingstoke, (b) Hampshire and (c) England in each year since 1997. [197431]
Beverley Hughes: Data are not available on the sex of managers of full day care.
The 2006 Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey estimated that the average proportion of male staff working in full day care settings in England was 2 per cent. In total, there were 2,500 male staff working in full day care settings in England.
The average proportion of male staff working in full day care settings in England for each year available is shown in the following table:
| Male staff working in full day care settings in England | ||
| Average proportion of male staff per setting (percentage) | Total number of male staff | |
Data are not available at local authority level.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what estimate he has made of the average number of hours worked per week by (a) childcarers in maintained settings, (b) childcarers in private, voluntary and independent nurseries and (c) childminders in each year since 1997. [199873]
Beverley Hughes: The Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey estimated that staff working in full day care in children's centres worked an average (mean) of 34 hours a week in 2006, compared with an average of 17 hours a week for staff in sessional settings. Data for all childcare and early years providers for each year available are shown in the following table.
| Average number of hours worked per week by staff in child care and early years provision in maintained schools | |||
| 2003 | 2005 | 2006 | |
| Notes: 1. Children's centres were included in the survey for the first time in 2006; therefore data is not available for previous years. 2. After school and holiday clubs were sampled differently in 2005 and comparable figures for this year are not available. 3. Early years settings in maintained schools were not included in the 2005 survey. | |||
In 2006 full day care staff in privately owned settings worked an average of 35 hours a week, compared with 26 hours for full day care staff in settings under voluntary ownership. 2006 data for all child care providers available are shown in the following table.
| Average number of hours worked per week by staff in child care providers, by ownership of setting, 2006 | |||||
| Private | Voluntary | Local authority | School/college | Other | |
| Note: Data for other providers are not available by type of ownership. | |||||
The 2006 Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey estimated that childminders looked after children for an average of 16 hours a week in term time, and for 23 hours a week in school holidays. Data for each year available are shown in the following table.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many and what proportion of (a) private, voluntary and independent nurseries and (b) childminders received funding from local authorities to deliver the free entitlement in each local authority area in each of the last five years. [199875]
Beverley Hughes: The available information is shown in the table.
The table provides information about the number of private, voluntary and independent providers delivering a free early education to three and four-year-olds in England. Data is provided for 2004 to 2007 only because data for 2003 is not available.
The latest figures on early education places for three and four-year-olds in England were published in Statistical First Release (SFR) 19/2007 “Provision for children under five years of age in England: January 2007”, available on my Department's website
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