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14 Dec 2009 : Column 675W—continued
Capita
Mr. Touhig: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether any contracts between Capita Group plc and his Department and its predecessors have been cancelled before completion since 1997; and whether Capita Group plc has been liable for any penalties arising from failings in the administration of contracts with his Department and its predecessors since 1997. [303081]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: This information could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Mr. Touhig: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on how many occasions Capita Group plc tendered for contracts let by his Department and its predecessors in each of the last five years; how many such tenders were successful; how much his Department and its predecessors paid to Capita Group plc for the execution of contracts in each such year; how many contracts which terminate after 2010 Capita Group plc hold with his Department; and what the monetary value is of all outstanding contracts between his Department and Capita Group plc. [303151]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: A complete answer to this question could be supplied only at disproportionate cost. I can tell you, however, that the Department spent the following amounts with Capita over the past five years:
| £ | |
Total payments made to Capita during the period was £647,523,975.
The Department currently holds 15 direct contracts with Capita Group with a total value worth £82million and 48 contracts through a framework agreement with the Department for Works and Pensions. It would not be possible to identify how much has been paid against these contracts without disproportionate costs.
Children: Databases
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether ContactPoint users are trained in the detection and removal of malware. [304655]
Dawn Primarolo: ContactPoint users will be able to access ContactPoint only from computers that are part of an accredited system. This accreditation includes a requirement that systematic processes and software tools are in place to report incidents and to detect malware and spyware.
Most software tools are automated and do not require intervention from the users in order to detect malware
or spyware. Training users to respond to malware detection is part of the accrediting organisation's normal responsibility.
Removing malware is a highly-skilled task requiring system-level access rights that most ContactPoint users will not possess. Commercial best practice is that malware removal is carried out by dedicated IT support teams.
Children: Day Care
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what funding his Department has allocated to the National Childminding Association for the delivery of consultancy services to every local authority in 2009-10. [305265]
Dawn Primarolo: The Department's Strategic Grant for 2009-10 to the National Childminding Association (NCMA) to help develop and sustain home-based child care, includes £270,112 for consultancy advice and support to local authorities.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what his most recent estimate is of the number of childminders who are not registered with Ofsted. [305333]
Dawn Primarolo: No estimate has been made of the number of unregistered child minders since there is no reliable method of making this estimate.
Children: Homelessness
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many local authorities have developed a joint protocol on homeless teenagers between children's and housing services in order to comply with the House of Lords decision in R (G) v London borough of Southwark [2009]. [303618]
Dawn Primarolo: This information is not collected centrally.
Children: Protection
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve and (b) encourage information sharing between (i) local authorities, (ii) police forces, (iii) the Probation Service and (iv) NHS services when assessing risks to children. [304153]
Dawn Primarolo: The Government recognise the importance of effective and appropriate information sharing to help those who need additional services and in safeguarding and promoting their welfare. Information sharing between practitioners is an essential part of building a complete picture of the situation, being able to correctly assess the risks and in enabling effective early intervention to help improve outcomes for all.
While there is already much good practice in information sharing and growing evidence of increasing confidence among practitioners, we recognise that in some situations practitioners are still unsure when they can share information lawfully. The Government are continuing to work with partners across all sectors, to raise awareness
of good information sharing practice and to promote the guidance and training materials that support it.
HM Government's "Information Sharing: Guidance for Practitioners and Managers" which is for practitioners across children's and adult's services (including local authorities, police forces, the Probation Service and the NHS), was developed and published in October 2008 by a cross-Government team.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) led this work, in association with representatives of other Government Departments including Department of Health (DH), Cabinet Office, Home Office (HO) and Ministry of Justice (MOJ). The guidance, together with additional supporting materials, can be found on the DCSF website at:
It explains when and how information can be shared legally and professionally, in order to achieve improved outcomes. It also advises how organisations should support practitioners to embed appropriate information sharing practices, including in national standards and codes of practice, where appropriate.
The National Safeguarding Delivery Unit (NSDU) was established in response to the recommendations made in Lord Laming's "The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report (2009)" to provide a strong, co-ordinated strategic lead across four Departments (DCSF, MOJ, HO and DH). As part of its programme of activity, the unit is taking forward work to help embed good information sharing practice.
The Department has also developed a set of tools to make it easier for practitioners to work together and share information appropriately. These include ContactPoint, which is an online directory that provides a quick way for authorised practitioners to find out who else is working with the same child, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) to help practitioners assess children and young people's additional needs, develop a common understanding of those needs and how to work together to meet them, and National eCAF, which is currently in development and will be a secure IT system for storing and accessing information captured through the CAF.
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what guidance his Department issues to local authorities on when to initiate child protection procedures. [304156]
Dawn Primarolo: Guidance to local authorities on when to initiate child protection procedures is contained within Chapter 5 of the statutory guidance "Working Together to Safeguard Children". This is currently being revised in response to the recommendations made by Lord Laming in "The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report".
Christmas
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department has spent on Christmas (a) cards, (b) parties and (c) decorations in the last 12 months. [303844]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: In the last 12 months, the Department spent £2,737 on Christmas cards and £542 on a Christmas tree at its headquarters building. The Department does not fund Christmas parties.
Community Relations: Religion
Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with reference to the answer of 5 November 2009, Official Report, column 1120W, on "Community Relations: Faith Schools", if he will assess the effect on community cohesion of faith schools; and if he will make a statement. [302654]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: The Department does not currently hold data or have any mechanisms in place to assess the effect of faith schools on levels of cohesion in particular areas.
All maintained schools in England have had a duty to promote community cohesion since September 2007. This has been inspected by Ofsted since September 2008. Data are therefore available on Ofsted's judgment of how schools are performing in fulfilling that duty and many faith schools are included in those receiving good or outstanding. The judgment relates to the contribution an individual school is making given its local context. Schools are not held accountable for the level of cohesion in a local area which will be influenced by a large number of factors.
As part of the Department's work to support schools in meeting their duty to promote community cohesion, the Department's officials have commissioned Ipsos/Mori to assess the impact of the community cohesion duty on different types of maintained schools which includes faith schools. The findings from the study will be published in autumn 2010.
Departmental Energy
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department spent on energy bills in respect of its estate in each year since its inception; and how much he expects to spend in each of the next two years. [304752]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: The Department for Children, Schools and Families spent the following amounts on energy bills in the following years:
| £ | |
Due to billing cycles differing in each of our buildings, it is not possible to provide any figures for the current financial year, and as we are only a proportion of the way through the year, such figures would not be comparable with those above.
The Department is not in possession of sufficient information to predict its expenditure on energy for the next two years.
Departmental Finance
Mrs. Maria Miller:
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding his Department has allocated for the (a) Parent Know
How campaign, (b) child development grant, (c) training of the 5,000 outreach advisers referred to in the Children's Plan and (d) Respect Parenting experts in each of the 77 designated areas in each financial year since 2006-07; and from what budget (i) such funding and (ii) funding for the two parenting advisers in each local authority has been drawn. [305271]
Dawn Primarolo: The funding allocated by DCSF to the programmes is as follows:
Parent Know How began in 2008 and is a suite of family services delivered through telephone helplines, online digital services and through print media. It is delivered by a range of third and private sector organisations.
| £ | |
Funding in 2008-09 includes £4.1 million for local authorities to purchase new database systems as part of the Parent Know How Directory. Figures include capital and revenue funding and are rounded to the nearest thousand.
| £ million | |
The Department has allocated up to £4 million in this spending period for outreach training, and will publish details of training soon. This funding is being drawn from the Department's programme budgets for these financial years.
(d) Respect Parenting Practitioners
The Respect Parenting Practitioners received funding of £3.85 million in 2007-08 from the Home Office Respect Task Force budget and £3.85 million each year in 2008-09 and 2009-10 from the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) Families Group budget. Each of the 77 local authorities was allocated £50,000 per year over the three years.
The Parenting Experts have been allocated a total of £9 million in 2008-10 and £11.5 million in 2009-10. This has been funded from the DCSF Families Group budget.
Mrs. Maria Miller:
To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department has allocated to (a) the Graduate Leader
Fund, (b) extending the free early learning entitlement to 38 weeks per year, (c) the Free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work programme and (d) Early Excellence centres from the Standards Fund in (i) 2009-10 and (ii) 2010-11. [305336]
Dawn Primarolo: The information is as follows:
(a) The Department has allocated £305 million during the period 2008-11 for the Graduate Leader Fund (GLF), made up of £232 million in the Sure Start Early Years Childcare Grant for settings, routed via local authorities, and £73 million for the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) to deliver Early Years Professional Status training and accreditation.
This funding forms part of the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant (SSEYCG) distributed by local authorities and is part of the main revenue funding block which is not ring-fenced for the GLF.
(b) The free early learning entitlement is being extended from 12.5 hours a week for 38 weeks a year to 15 hours a week for 38 weeks a year in a staged roll-out. Since September 2009 all local authorities have been delivering an extended offer of 15 hours a week to their 25 per cent. most disadvantaged three and four-year-olds. From September 2010 all eligible three and four-year-old children will be entitled to 15 hours a week free provision over no fewer than 38 weeks of the year offered on a more flexible basis to better meet families' needs. Funding of £170 million in 2009-10 and £340 million in 2010-11 has been made available through the Standards Fund to fund the additional 2.5 hours per week of provision and flexible delivery. This funding is over and above that which local authorities currently receive through the Dedicated Schools Grant for the current 12.5 hour free entitlement.
(c) For the Free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work scheme we have allocated £25 million for 2009-10 and a further £40 million for 2010-11.
(d) Funding for Early Excellence Centres from the Department ceased at the end of March 2006.
Mrs. Maria Miller: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department spent on the (a) Childcare Sufficiency and Access Grant, (b) Sure Start Children's Centre, (c) Sure Start local programmes and (d) Outcomes, Quality and Inclusion block of the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant in each financial year between 2003-04 and 2007-08. [305337]
Dawn Primarolo: The spend by local authorities on Sure Start Children's Centres and Sure Start Local Programmes between 2003-04 is shown in Table 1. The Childcare Sufficiency and Access and Outcomes Quality and Inclusion blocks of the Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare Grant did not come into being until 2008-09.
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