Ministerial role

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Children and Families)

Organisations: Department for Education
Current role holder: Josh MacAlister OBE MP

Responsibilities

The minister’s responsibilities include:

  • children’s social care
  • children in care and children in need
  • looked-after children
  • child protection
  • adoption
  • kinship care and foster care
  • care leavers
  • children’s social care workforce
  • unaccompanied asylum-seeking children
  • single unique identifier for children
  • local authority improvement
  • family support
  • safeguarding
  • prevention of serious violence in schools and post-16 settings
  • counter extremism in schools and post-16 settings
  • maintenance and improvement of the education estate
  • environmental sustainability in the education sectors

Current role holder

Josh MacAlister OBE MP

Josh MacAlister was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State State (Minister for Children and Families) at the Department for Education on 7 September 2025.

He was elected as the MP for Whitehaven and Workington in July 2024.

More about this person

Previous holders of this role

  1. Janet Daby MP

    2024 to 2025