Coram responds to consultations on Spending Review and Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Spending Review 2025

Coram’s response to HM Treasury’s Spending Review 2025 consultation was led by Coram Family and Childcare (CFC), whose principal call was for the Government to introduce and fund a universal right to 30 hours per week of early education for children from the age of nine months until they start school.

The submission states: “A universal early education and childcare entitlement would have the dual impact of supporting the Government’s milestone of 75% of five-year-olds reaching a good level of development by 2028, while also stimulating the economy. Therefore, we recommend that the Government prioritises funding for early education and childcare in this Spending Review.”

The CFC submission also highlights research demonstrating the cost of universal childcare and its return on investment and also outlines policy recommendations for children and families underserved by the current system – such as children and families in poverty, children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and children in migrant families. You can read the full submission here.

Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill

Colleagues from across Coram have contributed to the charity’s formal response to the Children’s Wellbeing & Schools Bill following the call for evidence from the Public Bill Committee group of MPs charged with scrutinising the Bill, which closes tomorrow (11 February).

In its summary, Coram states: “Coram welcomes the main provisions in the Children’s Welling & Schools Bill, while calling for specific extensions and amendments, notably to increase focus on the timescales and needs of our youngest children, while also calling for additional measures to improve well-being measurement and support for children and young people.

“Given the importance of making sure that the voice of children and young people is heard, Coram is disappointed that advocacy – a key tool in ensuring children and young people can access their rights and entitlements – is missing from the Bill.”

Some of the key responses from Coram include:

• We welcome the proposed legal duty on local authorities to offer family group decision-making (FGDM) to parents of children at pre-proceedings stage – while this will already be standard practice for many authorities, the new duty will help to ensure greater consistency of practice;
• We are surprised that schools and educational settings are not being made a statutory safeguarding partner in line with recommendations from the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and other reviews;
• Coram supports the introduction of the register for home-educated pupils as a critical protection to a child’s right to education and to safeguarding;
• We recommend the reintroduction of the national adoption register to ensure that all children waiting for adoption receive a proactive matching service;
• Coram supports the introduction of the Single Unique Identifier. However, clarity and guidance are also required to make clear when data should not be shared.
• We support the extension of support for care leavers in this bill. Provisions that ensure more consistency across the country in the support that is offered and make the transition from care and reduction in support for care leavers more gradual are to be welcomed.
• It is important that a Bill entitled ‘wellbeing’ is measured according to its impact on wellbeing. Measuring what children say makes their lives good can help focus services on what helps children flourish, and drive investment where it will make the most difference. A key question for the Government is whether they can provide details on how it plans to evaluate its progress on key elements of the Bill, and whether it has considered tools such as national wellbeing measurement to provide a clearer picture of the factors affecting young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Coram’s full response to the Public Bill Committee call for evidence can be found here.