Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Children and Families)
Josh MacAlister OBE MP
Biography
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.
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Children and Families)
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