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Rachael Wardell’s year as president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) is a pivotal one for children’s social care in England.

In the next 12 months, the Department for Education (DfE) expects councils to “transform the whole system of help, support and protection, to ensure that every family can access the right help and support when they need it, with a strong emphasis on early intervention to prevent crisis”.

Under the DfE’s Families First Partnership programme, authorities and their partners are tasked with establishing family help services – to support families with multiple and complex needs to stay together where possible – and multi-agency child protection teams – to intervene decisively when children are at risk of significant harm.

These reforms are underpinned by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which also heralds action to reshape placements for looked-after children, to boost sufficiency and quality, better support children with the most complex needs and curb excess profit-making by providers.

An eye-watering challenge for DCSs

It would be a daunting agenda at the best of times for directors of children’s services also facing severe challenges in relation to other areas, such as special educational needs and disability (SEND) services.

But against the backdrop of global economic turbulence, deepening child poverty and tight public finances, the challenge seems eye-watering.

However, Surrey council director Wardell, who succeeded Andy Smith on 1 April 2025, says she is excited to take the helm at ADCS.

Rachael Wardell (photo supplied by ADCS)

“It’s a really interesting time to be president. With a relatively new government with a big agenda, I think it’s a very exciting time to be working closely with the Department for Education and others.”

Her approach, she says, will be one of continuity with her predecessors, adding that it is important for the association not to be “chopping and changing in terms of what we’re seeking to do when we work with government”.

“What we’ve learned that if you work with central government, you can’t, in the life of one presidency, necessarily achieve change that you set out to achieve. It happens over years.”

Influence on agency social work policy

An example of this is policy on the use of agency social workers in children’s services.

Wardell’s predecessor but three, Charlotte Ramsden, spoke out on the issue in 2021, calling for national pay rates for locums to manage costs and enhance workforce stability.

Ramsden’s successor, Steve Crocker, went further the following year, in suggesting an outright ban on social work employment agencies to tackle the “profiteering” practices of some.

The DfE then proposed national rules to regulate councils’ use of agency staff, which were consulted upon under Crocker’s successor, John Pearce, and then started to be implemented under Wardell’s predecessor, Andy Smith. Both Pearce and Smith worked with, and sought to influence, the department on the rules’ content.

The rules’ implementation will conclude under Wardell, who has been involved in ADCS’s influencing effort throughout as chair of its workforce policy committee, until 2024, and then vice-president over the past year.

Fall in use of locums ‘influenced by rules’

The DfE’s latest children’s social work workforce data showed the first fall in agency numbers in seven years, in the year to September 2024. Though this was one month before the rules came into force, Wardell is clear that they were a factor in councils’ reduced use of locums.

“I’m pretty clear that it is a response to anticipating the changes coming in and lots of positive conversations between agency social workers and their local authorities about whether now is the right time for them to become permanent.”

With the rise in the number of permanently employed social workers exceeding the fall in the number of locum staff, Wardell says it is not a case of agency workers leaving the profession.

“Obviously, we have to wait and see if it continues to play out in that positive way,” she says. “But all of the anecdotes I hear, alongside the data that I see, says that we are having different kinds of conversations with our social workers about permanent employment, which is a positive thing.”

The current Labour government is going further than its Conservative predecessor on the agency rules by, firstly, putting them into law, and, secondly, applying them to council children’s social care staff generally.

Wardell welcomes this move, saying ADCS was concerned about bad practices, such as some agencies only supplying authorities with whole teams, not the individual locums they need, being applied to non-social work staff.

Recognising the value of non-social work staff

These staff – early help workers, family support practitioners – will play a critical part in the DfE’s social care reforms, as part of family help teams, holding cases as lead practitioners, including after they enter the statutory realm of a child being in need.

Wardell welcomes this acknowledgement of these practitioners’ skills and experience.

“A lot of times there was a failure to recognise the other qualifications that they had,” she says. “They are already tremendously skilled and experienced and we welcome that parity of esteem that the new framework provides for them.”

Concerns have been raised, including by Ofsted and the British Association of Social Workers, about the potential risks from not having social workers hold statutory cases.

However, Wardell says councils are already investing in the professional development of family support staff, and other non-social workers, and she expects this “to be strengthened under these arrangements”.

But what of the government’s wider agenda of rebalancing the social care system away from putting children on child protection plans or taking them into care towards supporting families to stay intact?

Councils have succeeded in boosting investment in family support since 2021 following several years of stagnation, but spending on it pales in comparison with expenditure on safeguarding and the care system.

Prospects for success for plan to ‘rebalance’ social care

Wardell says the prospects for rebalancing the system are “the best in a long time”. Most councils, she says, have practice models – such as family safeguarding – that are focused on supporting families to resolve their needs and stay together.

This is now being aided and abetted by policy, legislation and funding.

To help them engineer the shift, the DfE has provided authorities with a £270m children’s social care prevention grant in 2025-26, which they are expected to use in tandem with further just over £250m previously allocated to the now closed Supporting Families programme.

Wardell says this is “absolutely better than not having that funding there at all”, but is not sufficient on its own, being a small fraction of council spending on children’s social care (about £14bn).

“Some of our challenge is to bend the rest of our resources in the same direction – and to treat the funding like yeast, as a catalyst,” she adds.

Making this happen is no easy task, given the other pressures on children’s services.

Combating the high cost of placements

Not the least of these the high and rising cost of placements for children in care, as a result of an increasing care population, with more and more complex need, shortages of provision and alleged “profiteering” by providers.

The government is seeking to tackle this both through investment in children’s home capacity and foster care and reforms to the commissioning, regulation and provision of placements.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would enable ministers to direct councils to set up so-called “regional care co-operatives” in order to commission care collectively, giving them greater power to shape provision to meet children’s needs.

It would also introduce DfE financial oversight over the most significant providers, to guard against them unexpectedly failing and leaving a gap in provision. In addition, it would provide ministers with a backstop power to cap provider profits, should other measures not curb excess profit-making.

Wardell is positive about this package of reforms.

However, whatever the merits of legislative reform and increased funding, councils’ success in rebalancing the system are also dependent on the demands on them generated by social needs and pressures.

‘More child poverty and social disadvantage’

“We’ve seen upwards pressure driven by child poverty and some of the impact on our communities of social disadvantage and also some of the other changes in society around extra-familial harms, exploitation and radicalisation, all of which are challenging to respond to,” she says.

Beyond that, the government is now wrestling with the impact on the public finances of a less secure and more economically turbulent world. This heralds tight public finance settlements for services other than defence and the NHS in the forthcoming spending review, which will set expenditure limits from 2026-29.

Wardell’s message to ministers is to stay the course on children’s social care reform, based on an invest to save argument.

“We would say that we need a long-term financial settlement that provides us with security for children’s services and for local government more broadly, to go forward,” she says.

“I think that we would say that if you get things right for children, you are storing up positive financial impact for future years, because you have lower cost pressures when those young people reach adulthood.”

Profit-making from children’s care in Wales is set to end by 2030, other than in exceptional circumstances, after a bill to implement the measure became law.

The passage of the Health and Social Care (Wales) Act 2025 makes Wales the first UK nation to institute an effective ban on profit in the provision of fostering, children’s home or secure accommodation placements for looked-after children. In Scotland, independent fostering agencies are not permitted to make a profit, but private children’s homes are.

After the legislation received Royal Assent today, minister for children and social care Dawn Bowden said: “By removing profit from the care of looked after children, we’re ensuring that funding goes towards improving outcomes for young people and I’m proud that we’re the first UK nation to take this bold step.”

Three stages of profit ban

Under the government’s plans, the policy to eliminate profit will proceed in three phases:

1. From 1 April 2026, no new for-profit providers of children’s home, fostering or secure accommodation services will be allowed to register in Wales.
2. From 1 April 2027, existing for-profit providers will not be able to add additional beds or foster carers to their services.
3. From 1 April 2030, councils will not be able to make new placements in existing for-profit providers of children’s home, fostering or secure accommodation services without ministerial approval, in the case of Welsh authorities, or in exceptional circumstances specified in regulations, in the case of English authorities.

Following stage three, placements will generally only be permitted in council-run homes, or with local authority foster carers, or with placements provided by four other types of organisation: charitable companies limited by guarantee without share capital; charitable incorporated organisations; charitable registered societies or community interest companies.

Under all four models, there are no dividends paid to shareholders or members and surpluses must be reinvested in services. These organisations would also have to have as their primary purpose the welfare of children or another public good determined by the Welsh Government.

Council and provider concerns about legislation 

The Welsh Government has said that the legislation is a response to young people’s concerns about having profit made from their care and would ensure that surpluses were reinvested in improving services.

However, both councils and providers have voiced concerns about the impact of the act.

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) has warned that it risks putting pressure on an already-stretched care system, while the Children’s Home Association has said that ministers have “significantly underestimated” the cost of replacing for-profit services and that children would increasingly be placed in unregulated care as a result of the act.

Legislation to eliminate profit from the provision of care to looked-after children in Wales has been approved by the Senedd and so will become law.

Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, new placements in for-profit children’s homes, secure accommodation or foster placements, by Welsh or English councils, will be banned – other than in exceptional circumstances – in April 2030.

This is three years later than Welsh ministers’ original target for eliminating profit, but they have lengthened their planned timetable in response to significant concerns about the potential disruption to children’s care from their original plan.

Currently, the private sector provides 87% of children’s home and 35% of fostering placements in Wales.

Young people ‘don’t want profit made from care’

Introducing its final debate in the Senedd last week, the Labour government’s minister for children and social care, Dawn Bowden, said the legislation was a response to young people saying that “they did not want to be the means of someone making a profit out of the challenges that they and their families faced”.

She said in delaying implementation, the government was “mindful of minimising the risk of disruption to children”.

However, she added: “But I want to be very, very clear that the 2030 date for the ending of new placements by Welsh local authorities in existing for-profit services is not a target date, it is the absolute end date.

“And I expect substantial progress to be made before then in ending placements of existing for-profit children’s homes and fostering services prior to 2030 in areas that have sufficiency for that not-for-profit provision, and I will be making sure that we get to that place as quickly as we possibly can.”

Councils’ concerns over impact on care system

However, the Welsh Local Government Association, while voicing support for the bill’s ambitions, raised concerns about its impact on the care system.

“Councils continue to fully support the ambition of removing profit from the care of children that the Health and Social Care Bill aims to deliver,” said Charlie McCoubrey, the WLGA’s spokesperson for health and social services.

“It’s an important step towards making sure vulnerable children and young people get the right support, with their needs prioritised over financial gain.

“That said, we’re still concerned about the potential impact on a system that’s already under pressure, with a need for appropriate levels of funding to make this work. Councils are already stretched, and without proper, long-term investment, there’s a real risk of putting even more pressure on the services children rely on.

“We’re keen to keep working closely with the Welsh Government to help deliver these changes in a way that supports local authorities, doesn’t destabilise existing placements, and makes a real difference to children’s lives.”

Welsh Government ‘has significantly underestimated costs’

From a provider perspective, the Children’s Home Association said there was “no evidence” that many children’s homes providers would be able to transition to a not-for-profit model, meaning councils would have to replace them.

However, it warned that the Welsh Government had “significantly underestimated the cost of replacing the providers who have provided specialist care to society’s most vulnerable for decades”.

The CHA cited figures produced by the Welsh Government itself showing that the average weekly cost of looking after a child in a standard four-bed independent home was £3,811, 38% below the equivalent for a local authority home (£5,625).

The association also accused the Welsh Government of rejecting efforts from the sector to devise a “viable solution”, for example, by permitting models of care that restrict profit. It said that children would increasingly be placed in unregulated settings due to a lack of placements.

‘The right thing to do, but concerns must be addressed’

Giving the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Cymru’s response to the bill, national director Sam Baron said: “This is a progressive and ambitious piece of legislation which, is simply the right thing to do.

“Whilst full implementation will take several years, this move will rightly return public money into the public care system, increasing available resources and, by implication, release public money to address the issues of quality variations and low salaries.

“However, frontline voices and concerns must be listened to and addressed, by ensuring an already stretched public system receives the desperate investment it already needs to avoid even greater pressures being felt further down the line.”

Profit ‘not inherently at odds with excellent care’

The bill, which will also introduce direct payments for people receiving NHS continuing healthcare, was passed comfortably, with only the Conservatives voting against.

The party’s shadow cabinet secretary for health and social care, James Evans, said private sector providers played “a critical role in ensuring that children have somewhere safe to live and receive the care and support they need” and that it was “wrong to assume that  making profit is inherently at odds with delivering excellent care”.

Under the government’s plans, the policy to eliminate profit will proceed in three phases:

1. From 1 April 2026, no new for-profit providers of children’s home, fostering or secure accommodation services will be allowed to register in Wales.
2. From 1 April 2027, existing for-profit providers will not be able to add additional beds or foster carers to their services.
3. From 1 April 2030, councils will not be able to make new placements in existing for-profit providers of children’s home, fostering or secure accommodation services without ministerial approval, in the case of Welsh authorities, or in exceptional circumstances specified in regulations, in the case of English authorities.

Who can provide care to children?

The bill permits local authorities and four types of organisation to provide care to children: charitable companies limited by guarantee without share capital; charitable incorporated organisations; charitable registered societies or community interest companies.

Under all four models, there are no dividends paid to shareholders or members and surpluses must be reinvested in services. These organisations would also have to have as their primary purpose the welfare of children or another public good determined by the Welsh Government.

By Katharine Sacks-Jones, chief executive, Become

As social workers, playing a leading role in the lives of care-experienced young people, you know more than anyone the immense pressure the system is under.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced in December, clearly intends to improve children’s social care, through measures including better oversight and regulation about where children live and increased support for care leavers.

However, further scrutiny shows there are places where it could be strengthened, to significantly improve opportunities and experiences for care-experienced young people.

Last month, I gave evidence to the parliamentary committee looking at the bill, setting out what we welcome, and where it needs to go further for young people. After all, it’s only if their needs are being met that we know the system is working.

Strengthening Staying Close support

Statutory homelessness rates for care leavers aged 18-20 have increased by 54% in the past five years.

This has to change, which is why our End The Care Cliff campaign has been calling for the Staying Put and Staying Close schemes to be fully funded legal entitlements for all care leavers up to 25, unless they opt out.

It’s good news then that the bill says that local authorities must assess whether care leavers aged under 25 require Staying Close support and would then be under a duty to provide it to those in need.

But, as the criteria for assessment is not set out, we’re concerned this could lead to a rationing of support or a postcode lottery. We also want to see young people’s wishes and preferences taken into account in determining what support they might benefit from.

Going further on tackling care leaver homelessness

No young person should be facing homelessness, so it was especially welcome to see the government taking up a key ask of End the Care Cliff, by proposing an amendment to prevent care leavers from being found intentionally homeless. Now we’d like them to go further.

Currently, care leavers aged 18-20 are automatically assessed as being in ‘priority need’, which means local authorities are required to provide them with accommodation.

We think the bill should extend this to care leavers up to the age of 25, giving them a much-needed safety net.

The importance of financial support to care leavers

The bill will require local authorities to publish information about how they are supporting care leavers, particularly around housing, which we think is a positive move.

We frequently hear from young people on our Care Advice Line who are in acute financial crisis, so would like to see an additional focus on what financial support is available to young people leaving care.

Extending corporate parenting duties beyond councils

We’re disappointed that government proposals to extend corporate parenting duties to other public bodies are not currently included in the legislation, and hope they will reconsider bringing forward this important measure.

Preventing distant placements by regional commissioners

The bill gives the government new powers to direct neighbouring local authorities to commission care jointly, with the aim of improving their assessments of need and strategies for ensuring sufficient placements.

We want to make sure that these regional co-operation arrangements don’t lead to more children being moved far from their local area, even if it’s still within the region.

Our Gone Too Far campaign highlights the negative impact of moving children far from families, friends and schools. Far too many young people tell us how this is disrupting their education, affecting their mental health, breaking their connections and leaving them isolated.

This is why we’d like a safeguard in the bill to prevent distant moves when it’s not in children’s best interests.

Requiring a national sufficiency plan

Local authorities are required to offer sufficient, suitable accommodation for children in their care. Underfunding and an increase in the number of children in care have made this challenging.

This has created huge instability for children and led to an increasing number of children living far away.

Whilst the bill introduces a number of welcome measures, including better financial oversight and powers to bring in profit caps for private providers, it doesn’t mention how it will boost capacity.

There needs to be a national strategy to understand how many children in care are living in places that don’t meet their needs, what’s needed to address this and how government will support local authorities to deliver.

Being ambitious for care-experienced young people

We know from the work we do with professionals like you that only so much can be done with the resources available, which is why we need to see funding commitments flowing from this legislation too.

It’s time to be ambitious and deliver the changes care-experienced young people need.

Become supports children in care and young care leavers 

“Flawed statistics” are undermining councils’ understanding of outcomes for children in care, meaning they are unable to judge whether they are securing the right kinds of provision.

That was the message from the South East Regional Care Co-operative (RCC) – one of two bodies set up to test the region-wide commissioning of placements – in a briefing paper on the data context for children in care services.

Like its counterpart in Greater Manchester, the South East RCC has been tasked by the Department for Education (DfE) with analysing care needs across the region and commissioning provision – including by establishing its own – to meet gaps, in the context of a nationwide shortages of placements.

In the briefing paper, the RCC, which is working on behalf of 18 authorities across the region, said existing statistics on the care system, produced by the DfE, did not enable it to answer key questions about the care that should be provided.

‘Flawed statistics’

For example, while DfE data showed the proportion of children placed outside their home authority, it did not cover the proportion of placements that were outside the region.

Data on children’s educational attainment or their self-reported mental health did not provide information on what they thought of the care they were receiving or about what their lives were like, the RCC added.

“From our placement statistics we don’t know how often we’re securing the kind of placement we ideally wanted to secure,” the briefing paper said.

“When we try to dig into the detail of any particular question, we find that our detailed statistics are flawed, because they look at such small numbers of children as to make changes statistically insignificant.”

Echoes of CMA report on sector

The findings echo those of the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) 2022 report on provision for looked-after children, which concluded that available data was insufficient to answer questions such as whether there was sufficient supply of specialised provision to meet a particular type of need in a particular location.

“One particular shortcoming is the lack of consistent data on whether the right type of placement in the right location was available or whether a placement was a second-best option,” said the CMA.

“We understand this information is collected within local authorities’ procurement tools but often not in a structured way that would allow analysis. This information would be vital for understanding how well local authorities are meeting their [duty to take steps to secure sufficient accommodation locally for children in their care].”

The RCCs in the South East and Greater Manchester are due to take responsibility for placements in their region from their member local authorities later this year.

Plan to roll out regional care co-operatives

Meanwhile, the government – through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – is legislating to enable it to require two or more local authorities to set up RCCs, to take responsibility for functions including:

• Assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of looked-after children.
• Producing strategies for meeting those requirements.
• Commissioning placements to meet the needs of looked-after children.
• Recruiting and supporting local authority foster carers.
• Developing, or facilitating the development of, new provision to accommodate looked-after children.

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Legislation to reform children’s social care has cleared its first parliamentary hurdle.

MPs approved the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill in principle yesterday (8 January 2024), following a debate in the House of Commons that saw a Conservative amendment that would have blocked the bill overwhelmingly defeated.

The bill will now be considered in detail, and likely amended, by a committee of MPs, before returning to the Commons to be further considered and voted upon, prior to consideration by the House of Lords.

With Labour’s huge majority in the Commons and the Lords unlikely to hold up the legislation, the bill is likely to become law in the spring, though some measures will not be implemented until future years.

‘Biggest reform in a generation’

Introducing the bill, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said it was part of “the biggest reform of children’s social care in a generation”, though one inherited in significant part from its Conservative predecessor. As well as the measures in the bill, this includes:

• The England-wide rollout of the family help model in 2025-26. Family help involves merging targeted early help and child in need services into multidisciplinary teams, designed to provide families in need with better, less stigmatising support, with a view to keeping families together.
• The trialling of financial allowances for some kinship carers in order to improve their ability to care for children.
• Rolling out regional fostering hubs to improve recruitment of foster carers and tackle existing shortages.

Prioritising keeping children with families

Phillipson said that the reforms were designed to help more children stay with their families, while improving the care system for those who could not, including by tackling provider profit levels.

“Our first priority is to keep children with their family wherever it is safe to do so, so the bill mandates all local authorities to offer family group decision making,” Phillipson told MPs. “With the guidance of skilled professionals, families with children at risk of falling into care will be supported to build a plan that works for them. We are strengthening support for kinship care, so that vulnerable children can live with the people they know and trust, wherever that is possible.

“However, despite the best efforts of all involved, some children will inevitably need to enter care, so we must reform the system so that it works for them. I know that members right across this House share my outrage at the excessive and exploitative profit making that we have seen from some private providers. It is shameful, it is unacceptable, and it will end.”

Conservative opposition

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott said the Conservatives was broadly supportive of the children’s social care measures in the bill, though was opposed to its proposals to place academy schools under similar requirements to local authority schools.

Its defeated amendment also sought to require the establishment of a national public inquiry into child sexual exploitation (CSE) by grooming gangs, an issue that has triggered a huge political row because of repeated attacks on the government over the issue by X owner Elon Musk.

Pledge to introduce mandatory reporting

While the government has not ruled out such an inquiry, it has instead announced the implementation of measures proposed by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), which issued its final report in 2022. These comprise:

• Introducing mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse by those in positions of trust over children, with criminal, as well as professional, sanctions for a failure to do so.
• Creating a performance framework, with data collection requirements, for the police concerning CSA and CSE. This responds to IICSA’s recommendation to introduce a core data set for the issue, to tackle what it found was a lack of reliable data, particularly in relation to CSE. The inquiry said the data set should include information on the characteristics of victims and alleged perpetrators of CSA/CSE, including age, sex and ethnicity, the factors that make children more vulnerable to abuse or exploitation and the settings in which abuse or exploitation occur.
• Legislating to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, a recommendation from IICSA’s 2022 report on CSE by organised networks.

By Tim Spencer-Lane

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was introduced in Parliament on 17 December 2024.

Part 1 of the bill contains reforms to children’s social care. Part 2 makes provision relating to education in England. Most of the social care reforms were foreshadowed in the policy paper, ‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’, which was published in November 2024.

This article summarises the main provisions that will impact on social workers.

Family group decision making

The bill would add a new section to the Children Act 1989 to impose a duty on local authorities who are considering making a court application for a care or supervision order, to offer a family group decision making (FGDM) meeting to the child’s parents or any person with parental responsibility for the child.

The purpose of the FGDM meeting is to enable a child’s family network to meet to discuss the welfare needs of the child and to make a proposal in response to concerns about the child’s welfare.

The duty does not apply if the local authority determines that it would not be in the child’s best interests.

Child protection and safeguarding

Safeguarding partners

The bill seeks to amend the Children Act 2004 to make it a requirement for the three safeguarding partners (the local authority, NHS integrated care board and police) in each local area to include education and childcare “relevant agencies” as mandatory participants in their multi-agency safeguarding arrangements. Currently, safeguarding partners only need to make arrangements to work with a “relevant agency” if they consider it appropriate to do so.

Multi-agency child protection teams

The bill would insert new sections into the Children Act 2004 to require safeguarding partners to establish and run at least one multi-agency child protection team in their area. The main purpose of these new teams is to support the local authority in delivering its child protection duties under section 47 of the Children Act 1989.

ICBs will be required to nominate a health professional with experience in relation to children’s health, while the police will be required to nominate an officer to be part of each multi-agency child protection team. The local authority is required to nominate someone with experience in education in relation to children and a social worker with experience in relation to children, and may appoint other appropriate individuals after consultation with safeguarding partners.

Information sharing

The bill would also amend the Children Act 2004 to impose a duty on specified persons and bodies to disclose information that may be relevant to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of a child, to other relevant persons in certain circumstances. The duty applies where the person considers that the disclosure may facilitate the exercise by the recipient of any of its functions that relate to safeguarding or promoting the welfare of children, unless disclosure would be detrimental to the child.

The duty to share information will apply to persons listed in section 11(1) of the Children Act 2004, including local authorities, ICBs, NHS trusts/foundation trusts, police forces, probation services and youth offending teams, along with education and childcare “relevant agencies”.

Consistent child identifier

The bill also makes provision, under the Children Act 2004, for a consistent child identifier (also known as a single unique identifier or SUI). Designated persons must include the consistent identifier when processing information about a child for safeguarding and promotion of welfare purposes.

Support for children in care or kinship care, and those leaving care

Kinship local offer

The bill would amend the Children Act 1989 to require local authorities to publish information about their general approach to supporting children in kinship care and kinship carers in their area, as well as financial support which may be available to them in their area (the “kinship local offer”).

Local authorities must take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that children in kinship care and kinship carers receive the information in the kinship local offer.

Supporting educational achievement

Under amendments to the Children Act 1989, local authorities would be required to take appropriate measures to support the educational outcomes of children in need and children in kinship care.

The steps that can be taken under this duty include enabling children to overcome barriers to their educational achievement and improving educational attendance. The duty is a strategic duty, which does not extend to the educational outcomes of individual children.

The local authority must appoint at least one person to discharge the duty (in practice this is usually the virtual school head).

Supporting care leavers

The bill would also introduce a new provision in the Children Act 1989 to require each local authority to consider whether each former relevant child (up to age 25) requires “staying close support” and where their welfare requires it, to offer that support.

“Staying close support” is support to assist the former relevant child: (1) to find and keep suitable accommodation and (2) to access services relating to health and wellbeing, relationships, education and training, employment and participating in society. Support means the provision of advice, information and representation.

There are also amendments to the Children and Social Work Act 2017 to require each local authority to also publish the arrangements it has in place to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood and independent living.

Accommodation of children

Regional co-operation

The bill seeks to amend the Children Act 1989 to give the secretary of state powers to direct two or more local authorities to make regional co-operation arrangements to carry out their functions in relation to the accommodation of looked after children.

The arrangements could be: (1) to carry out their strategic accommodation functions jointly, (2) for those functions to be carried out by one of the local authorities on behalf of the others or (3) for a corporate body, of a kind that may be specified in the secretary of state’s direction, to support them in carrying out those functions.

Deprivation of liberty

The bill also includes a number of changes to section 25 of the Children Act 1989. It would change the references from “restricting” liberty to “depriving” children of their liberty, to better reflect the nature and purpose of this section.

The bill would also provide for the authorisation of the deprivation of liberty of children in alternative placement types beyond just a secure children’s home. It brings within the scope of section 25 accommodation provided for the purpose of care and treatment of children that is capable of being used to deprive a child of their liberty (“relevant accommodation”).

The secretary of state would have powers to set out in regulations: (1) the maximum period for which a child may be kept in relevant accommodation both with and without the authority of a court, (2) the cohort of children who may be placed in relevant accommodation, and (3) a description of the alternative accommodation.

Currently, many children are being deprived of their liberty outside of a statutory framework, via the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.

The government’s intention is to “provide an alternative statutory route to authorise the deprivation of liberty of a child in a more flexible form of accommodation, bringing more deprivation of liberty cases under a statutory framework via section 25, including its criteria for access, mandatory review points and parity with [secure children’s homes] in terms of access to legal aid”.

Regulating provider groups

The bill would give new powers to Ofsted in relation to parent undertakings (ie where more than one setting is owned or controlled by the same private or voluntary provider group).

The bill seeks to place a duty on parent undertakings to develop and implement an improvement plan where Ofsted have identified quality issues in multiple settings and reasonably suspects there are grounds for cancellation of registration in relation to those settings.

Should parent undertakings not comply with these requirements, Ofsted will have the power to issue an unlimited monetary penalty.

Tackling unregistered children’s homes

The bill also includes new powers for Ofsted to impose monetary penalties for breaches of the Care Standards Act 2000, including for operating unregistered children’s homes. This is designed to give Ofsted a quicker alternative to prosecution in these cases.

Financial oversight regime

The bill would also introduce a financial oversight regime for relevant children’s social care providers who meet conditions that will be set out in regulations. These are likely to relate to the size of the provider and whether it would be difficult to replace were it to fail.

The bill would give the secretary of state the power to require providers made subject to the regime to submit a “recovery and resolution plan”, setting out risks to their financial sustainability and actions they propose to take in response to these.

The secretary of state would also have the power to arrange an independent business review of a provider where there is significant financial risk to its sustainability. The secretary of state would also be under a duty to warn local authorities if there was a real possibility of relevant services failing, with potential adverse effects for the councils or any children looked after by them.

Limiting profits

The bill also provides for regulations to be made enabling the secretary of state to cap any profit made by a non-local authority registered children’s social care provider. The secretary of state may only make such regulations if satisfied that it is necessary to do so.

The government has said that it only intends to use the provision if other policies do not sufficiently reduce profiteering in the children’s social care placements market.

Agency workers

The bill seeks to provide a power for the secretary of state to make regulations applying to all English local authorities on the use of “agency workers” in children’s social care. The regulations may require that the agency workers meet certain requirements and make provision about how they should be managed and the terms on which they are supplied to local authorities.

When in force, this regime would replace the rules, introduced in 2024 under statutory guidance, regarding local authorities’ use of agency social workers in children’s services.

Ill-treatment or wilful neglect

This bill also intends to close a gap in existing legislation by extending the offences of ill-treatment or wilful neglect by a care worker or care provider to someone in their care, under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, to children aged 16 or 17 in regulated establishments in England.

Currently, the 2015 act protects against ill-treatment or wilful neglect by care workers providing health care for an adult or child or social care for an adult, while the Children and Young Persons Act protects those under 16 from cruelty by those who have responsibility for them.

Children not in school

The bill proposes a number of reforms aimed at protecting children who are being educated at home. Most of these involve amendments to the Education Act 1996 and include:

• Compulsory registers of children not in school in each local authority area in England, and a duty on local authorities to support the children on their registers (should a parent request this).
• Changes to the school attendance order (SAO) legal framework, for example, by introducing statutory timeframes for issuing and processing SAOs and making it an offence for parents to withdraw a child subject to an SAO from school without following the proper procedure.
• A requirement for a parent to obtain local authority consent to home educate if a child is: (1) subject to an enquiry under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, (2) on a child protection plan, or (3) at a special school or academy.
• A power for the local authority, in cases where a child is subject to a section 47 Children Act 1989 enquiry or on a child protection plan and is already being home educated, to review whether it is in the best interests of the child to be in school and require that the child be registered at a school.
• A duty for local authorities to consider the home environment and other learning environments when determining whether or not such children should be required to attend school.

What happens next?

The bill will be subject to debate in Parliament and will no doubt be amended during its passage. It is likely to become law sometime in spring 2025.

Some provisions will come into force the day the act is passed (such as the powers to make regulations and orders), others will come into force two months later (such as the duty to publish information for kinship carers and children in kinship arrangements, and the extension of the ill-treatment or wilful neglect offences.

Some provisions will be implemented over a longer period of time. For example, the new multi-agency child protection teams will not be implemented until 2027.

Tim Spencer-Lane is a lawyer specialising in social care, mental capacity and mental health and is legal editor of Community Care Inform.

Most social workers believe Labour’s plans to tackle profiteering in children’s care will succeed, but not without consequences, a poll has found.

The Department for Education’s (DfE) proposed reforms include regional commissioning of care placements, greater transparency around provider pricing and new powers for Ofsted to investigate providers of multiple children’s homes and fine providers of unregistered services.

Should these measures not succeed in bringing down excessive profit-making from care placements, the government has said it would introduce a cap on providers’ profits.

But do social workers think these measures will work?

Reducing profiteering to affect care placements

A Community Care poll of nearly 800 social workers revealed that most (73%) were confident that the DfE’s plans would curb profiteering.

However, most of this group – and 60% of all respondents – said they would also result in a reduction in the already scarce supply of care placements. 

Just over a quarter (27%) believed the reforms would make little or no difference.

Reforms require ‘commitment by all services’ to work

Social worker Tom J questioned how the government would address the issue of providers “making excessive profits” on the grounds that they would be unlikely to be transparent and co-operate voluntarily.

“Many care homes in the UK are owned by private equity companies, including those based in Qatar and the emirate of Abu Dhabi. They have to make a profit. The company will never open up its books, but the care provider they own may be able to open up about their data.”

Mark Corrigan argued that the way forward was not reform, but increased funding for local authorities to create specialist provision, while Steve advocated fostering competition in the sector by encouraging local care providers to open children’s homes.

“Councils could do this by engaging with the already existing good quality provision and inviting them to branch out into new areas, such as children’s homes,” he said. “Many elderly or young adult providers would jump at the chance to make a better profit […], but moving into another market is risky.”

However, another practitioner, Annie, doubted the government’s capabilities to tackle profit levels, citing its track record in other sectors.

“Based on the government’s success in tackling profiteering of private companies in other sectors (railway, fossil fuel, and water companies spring to mind), I wouldn’t hold out hope for either reducing costs or better provision in the care sector any time soon.”

What are your thoughts on the DfE’s plans to tackle profiteering in children’s social care?

There has been an almost sevenfold increase in the number of children placed in unregistered homes in England over the past three years, Ofsted data has shown.

The number placed in confirmed unregistered children’s homes rose from 147 in 2020-21 to 982 in 2023-24. Over that time, the number of such homes identified by Ofsted increased from 144 to 931.

[Source: Ofsted (2024) Unregistered children’s homes]

Unregistered homes ‘typically of poor quality’

It is illegal to provide care and accommodation to a child without registering as a children’s home, and any provider that does not register is committing an offence, which generally triggers a warning letter from the regulator.

The increased use of registered placements comes despite Ofsted finding that they were typically of “poor quality”. This was evidenced by the fact that just 6% of unregistered settings applied to register with Ofsted after receiving a warning letter, with a mere 8% of these applications being approved.

Deprivation of liberty orders

One factor behind the rise in the number of unregistered placements is councils’ increasing use of deprivation of liberty orders – obtained from the High Court – for children with very complex needs or at high risk.

Many of these young people are placed in unregistered placements because of the lack of alternatives, including the severe shortage of secure children’s homes.

However, while Ofsted recorded a rise in the number of children on deprivation of liberty orders placed in unregistered settings, they accounted for just 12% of cases in 2023-24 and 15% in each of 2022-23 and 2021-22.

‘An indictment of the state of social care’

As a result, the increase in the use of unregistered homes is likely to reflect the lack of available placements for looked-after children more generally. This is the result of factors including the falling number of mainstream fostering households, the mismatch between the location of children’s homes and need, and the historically high numbers of children in care.

Children in care charity Become described the rise in the use of unregistered homes as “a real indictment of the current state of children’s social care”.

Chief executive Katharine Sacks-Jones said it meant that “hundreds of children who’ve experienced trauma are not being provided with the specialist, quality care they need, and instead are living in illegal and often completely unsuitable accommodation with limited support”.

Proposals to help Ofsted crack down on unregistered homes

The news comes with the government having announced plans for Ofsted to take swifter enforcement action against providers of unregistered placements.

Under these, the regulator, which has welcomed the proposals, would be given powers to fine providers, as an alternative to criminal prosecutions.

Sacks-Jones added: “The government’s recent proposals to address the issue of unregistered homes is welcome, but this latest data shows how urgently and robustly the government must act.

“We must see stronger scrutiny and enforcement so that all children are able to live in safe homes and receive the high-quality care and support they need to thrive.”

ADCS voices concerns over government plan

However, the proposals sparked concerns from Association of Directors of Children’s Services president Andy Smith, in his speech to last week’s National Children and Adult Services Conference.

“In an ideal world, we would want all placements to be in good quality registered settings, yet the reality is that the current framework of regulation does not allow us to effectively meet the needs of some of our most vulnerable children who have highly complex needs,” Smith said.

“Before we start to turn the dial in the wrong direction and issue civil proceedings against providers, we need to make sure that we have the right services in the right place to meet need.”

The government will legislate to create a new type of accommodation for children with complex needs in England who are at risk of being deprived of their liberty.

The placement type will be for children who may need to be deprived of their liberty at times, but will provide for restrictions to be increased and decreased according to need.

It will be distinct from secure children’s homes and not suitable for those who need to be placed in SCHs, which are specifically designed to restrict children’s liberty.

The pledge, announced in this week’s social care policy paper, is in response to the huge rise in the number of children made subject to deprivation of liberty (DoL) orders under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court – its backstop power to protect vulnerable people.

The orders have been used in relation to children with needs including severe mental health issues, significant trauma, autism, learning disabilities or being subject to, or at risk of, criminal or sexual exploitation.

For many children, they have involved moving into unregistered placements, without Ofsted’s regulatory oversight, severe restrictions on their movement and access to technology and contact, constant supervision, often by multiple staff members, and experiences of restraint.

The rise in DoL numbers has been driven by a lack of appropriate placements to meet their needs, whether in open or secure children’s homes or specialist tier 4 child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), and a reported reluctance from registered providers to admit them.

A new placement type

The Department for Education (DfE) said there was a need for “new forms of provision” to address the “gap” in supply for  children currently subject to DoL orders.

Photo: IQoncept/Adobe Stock

It said it would amend legislation to enable councils to place children in a new type of accommodation, which could “respond more flexibly to their changing and fluctuating needs”, reducing restrictions when safe to do so, as well as providing “crucial therapeutic care”.

The legislation would set “clear criteria for when children may need to be deprived of liberty and mandatory review points to ensure that no child is deprived of liberty for longer than is required to keep them safe”.

Secure accommodation orders

The statutory framework for the new placement type will be distinct from secure accommodation orders, which provide the legal basis for councils to place looked-after children in SCHs.

Section 25 of the Children Act 1989 provides that children may only be so placed if:

1. They have a history of absconding, would abscond from non-secure accommodation and, if they absconded, would be likely to suffer significant harm, or
2. They would likely injure themselves or others if placed in non-secure accommodation.

Not a solution to shortages of secure home placements

The DfE said its proposed new accommodation type would be for children whose needs cannot be met in an SCH, which means it would not provide a solution to the severe shortages of secure home places.

Ofsted has previously said that 50 children are waiting for an SCH place at any one time, while research last year by the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory found that, in 10% of DoL applications, it was explicitly stated that a secure home placement would have been preferable, but was not available.

England currently has 13 SCHs, with new or replacement provision due to be developed in London and Lincolnshire.

Experiences of children subject to DoL orders

The proposal responds to a key recommendation from a DfE-commissioned report from the Children’s Commissioner for England, Rachel De Souza, which examined the experiences of 15 children with experience of DoL orders.

Children’s Commissioner for England Rachel de Souza (credit: Office of the Children’s Commissioner)

The report, also published this week, found that the children had experienced significant instability in the support they received, before being made subject to a DoL.

This included frequent changes of placement and social workers, with the lack of consistent relationships being to the detriment of their mental health.

They experienced further trauma from the experience of separation from family and friends, changes in caregivers, isolation, restrictions and restraints while under the DoL orders.

Also, most of the children reported having limited opportunities to have their voices heard and be involved in decisions while under the order.

Commissioner’s recommendation for new placement type

The commissioner recommended the the government establish a new statutory framework for deprivation of liberty in an Ofsted-registered home that was not an SCH. This should make clear that:

• Deprivation of liberty should only be authorised when it is necessary for children’s safety and welfare and not because of a shortage of appropriate accommodation.
• There should be judicial oversight for any deprivation of liberty and any authorisation must be reviewed every three months.
• The child should automatically be a party to any deprivation of liberty proceedings, meaning they are represented by a Cafcass guardian.
• Children should have the opportunity to share their views with the judge as part of the deprivation of liberty process and should be supported to do so in a way that is comfortable for them.
• The education secretary and Ofsted must be notified of any deprivation of liberty application where the child is not in a registered home.
• Children deprived of their liberty should have access to advocacy, including non-instructed advocacy as needed.

‘Far fewer should be deprived of liberty’

However, the commissioner also called for action to ensure far fewer children were deprived of their liberty. This should involve “radical investment in creating new and safe places for children to live in registered children’s homes which can provide safe accommodation and therapeutic support for children living with trauma and at risk of harm”.

On this point, the DfE said that, in partnership with NHS England, it would pilot a new, community-based approach to delivering “specialist care and accommodation for children who have complex needs”, with input from social care, health, education and justice professionals.

This will be tested by the South East Regional Care Co-operative, one of two areas piloting the regionalised commissioning of care placements.

The DfE said the approach “has the potential to reduce both local authority reliance on costly unregistered placements and immediate and lifetime costs to the health and justice systems”.

Ofsted gives backing in principle

Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said the regulator backed the plan for a new placement type “in principle”, but warned that “how it is implemented will be critical to its success”.

Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for social care

“Any deprivation must be the least restrictive option possible and support children’s transitions to their next stage,” she added.

Stanley also said that Ofsted was looking to make changes to its social care common inspection framework, which governs its regulation of sector providers.

This was with a view to “[removing] any barriers that Ofsted may create, perceived or otherwise, to providers working with children with multiple and complex needs”.