Extend local authority duty to provide parental-level support for care leavers

WATE-(38) Response Historic AI-assessed

Extend local authority duty to provide parental-level support for care leavers

Recommendation

The duty upon local authorities under section 24(1) of the Children Act 1989 to advise, assist and befriend a child with a view to promoting his welfare when he ceases to be looked after by them should be extended so as to ensure that placing authorities provide the level of support to be expected of good parents, including (where appropriate) help to foster parents to provide continuing support920.

Published Evidence Summary

The following publicly available evidence relates to this recommendation:

No specific government response or progress data directly addressing the Waterhouse Inquiry's recommendation to extend local authority duty for parental-level support for care leavers has been identified within the provided official sources. Searches on gov.uk for 'Waterhouse Inquiry recommendation implementation' and 'Waterhouse Inquiry government response' returned generic search results without specific documents. A search on legislation.gov.uk for 'Waterhouse Inquiry' also yielded no results.

How was this assessed?

Assessed by gemini-2.5-flash on 24 Mar 2026

Checked data held on this site (government responses, progress updates, independent evidence)

External sources searched: www.gov.uk, www.legislation.gov.uk, hansard.parliament.uk

Jurisdiction

UK-wide