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 family justice
- fostering and regional care cooperatives
- care leavers
- children’s social care workforce
- unaccompanied asylum-seeking children
- single unique identifier for children and use of children’s social care data
- child protection, safeguarding and serious incidents
- local authority intervention and improvement
- family support including the families first programme
- tackling antisemitism
- prevention of serious violence in schools and post-16 settings
- counter extremism in schools and post-16 settings
- out-of-school settings
- school safeguarding and guidance on keeping children safe in education
- creation of new free schools
- maintenance and improvement of the education estate
- environmental sustainability in the education sectors
- deputising for the Secretary of State for Education in emergencies
Current role holder
Josh MacAlister OBE MP
Josh MacAlister was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Children and Families) at the Department for Education on 7 September 2025 and reappointed on 22 July 2026.
He was elected as the MP for Whitehaven and Workington in July 2024.
Previous holders of this role
Janet Daby MP
2024 to 2025