Summary of relevant policy areas for Residential Child Care: Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Regulating provider groups
New powers to Ofsted – ‘parent undertakings’ for providers with multiple settings
Ofsted ability to require provider to develop and implement an improvement plan when it is reasonably suspected quality issues could be found across the settings of the provider
Non-compliance Ofsted powers to issue unlimited monetary penalty.
Tackling unregistered children’s homes
Ofsted new powers to impose monetary penalties for operating unregistered children’s homes as a quicker alternative to prosecution.
Financial oversight regime
Financial oversight regime for some providers relating to the size of the provider and whether it would be difficult to replace were it to fail.
Secretary of state power to arrange an independent business review of a provider where there is significant financial risk to its sustainability, and duty to warn local authorities if a real possibility of relevant services failing.
Secretary of state powers to require a “recovery and resolution plan”, setting out risks to their financial sustainability and actions they propose to take in response to these.
Limiting profits
If other policies do not sufficiently reduce profiteering in the children’s social care placements market, Secretary of State to have new powers, if satisfied that it is necessary to do so, to cap any profit made by a non-local authority registered children’s social care provider.
Supporting care leavers
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.
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” 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.
Deprivation of liberty
A number of changes to section 25 of the Children Act 1989.
Changes from “restricting” liberty to “depriving” children of their liberty, to better reflect the nature and purpose of this section.
Provides for the authorisation of the deprivation of liberty of children in alternative placement types beyond a secure children’s home to include 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”).
Secretary of state 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 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”.
Ill-treatment or wilful neglect
Close gap in existing legislation of health and social care 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.
Parliamentary scrutiny
Commons Monday 17 March 2025
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – Hansard – UK Parliament
Stephen Morgan
Our approach to reform will break down barriers by shifting the focus of the children’s social care system to early support to keep families together. We will ensure that children can remain with their families where appropriate, support more children to live with kinship carers or in fostering families and fix the broken care market to tackle profiteering and put children’s needs first… A previous Labour Prime Minister observed, following Tawney:
“What a wise parent would wish for their children, so the state must wish for all its children.”
Helen Hayes Education Select Committee
We support the measures to improve the children’s social care market through regional commissioning and a financial oversight scheme. Action to remove profiteering in the children’s social care sector is long overdue.
The Committee welcomes the measures in the Bill that will enable more children to remain within their kinship network or, where a residential placement in kinship care is not possible, in contact with family and friends.
Continued addressing care leavers health assessments,
Liberal Democrats focus = kinship and independent schools
Various MPs Fostering, police funding, physical punishment as abuse, single unique identifier, sibling contact, staying close,
Emma Lewell Buck
“Just as children leaving residential care are treated differently from their peers in foster care, children aged 16 to 17 in residential care are also treated very differently from their younger peers. In 2021, the previous Government introduced provisions through statutory instruments to prohibit unregulated accommodation for children in care aged 15 or under, but not for those aged 16 or 17. Later, in 2023, they introduced what they deemed appropriate standards for supported accommodation for children in care and care leavers. These statutory instruments legitimised and encouraged the increasingly shameful practice of placing children in unregulated, unsafe hostels, bed and breakfasts, shared homes and caravan parks. Some children were even placed in tents on campsites”.
Stephen Morgan closing responding to debate (relevant quotes re RCC)
I welcome the opportunity to discuss the quality of care in and oversight of children’s homes, and I welcome the support of the Opposition for the position—implicit in their amendment—that action needs to be taken to better equip Ofsted to deal with poor practice across children’s homes.
Depriving a child of their liberty must always be a last resort, and it is of paramount importance that any restrictions placed on a child are appropriate and for no longer than absolutely necessary…. We also intend to bring forward regulations to require local authorities to seek approval from the Secretary of State before depriving of their liberty children who are under the age of 13 and in relevant accommodation.
Lords 20th May 2025
Searches of debates for residential and children’s homes – no matches.
Focus for debate = child protection, family group decision making, education, safeguarding, family hubs
Baroness Barron
“…a troubling pattern throughout it of an unclear definition of the problem it seeks to solve, insufficient evidence for the proposed solutions… no clear implementation plan, insufficient resources to implement and important gaps … there are reports that the initial pathfinder sites are encountering significant implementation problems that need to be resolved before a wider rollout. Surely the Government should publish the evaluation first and then adapt their approach depending on what it shows. I would be grateful if the Minister can confirm when that evaluation will be published”.
Baroness O’Neill. (Former Bexley Councillor)
“…the word on the street is that there have been issues with those pathfinders. Surely the sensible thing is to share that information and consider the findings before agreeing this Bill. …The intention might be to have clearer decision-making, improved information sharing, and unified threshold application, but the unintended consequences could be: a dilution of professional expertise; confusion over legal accountability; weakened local authority leadership; loss of focus on early help and prevention; operational bottlenecks and inflexibility; undermining universal services’ safeguarding role; implementation disruption; inconsistent models; and legal and human rights risks
Baroness Berridge
“…where is the adequate evidence that we have used previously to make changes to our child protection system? Where is the rigorous academic research that has so often been the evidential basis… If the concerns are valid, the report that comes back could very well be, “We advised you not to make this kind of statutory change and you did, and this is what has happened”. I would not want anybody to be in that situation—that inadvertently, while trying to improve the system, with experts advising that there could be unintended consequences, we do not take time to pause and make sure that this recommendation is supported by adequate evidence before it is implemented… This is a huge change and, as I said in earlier remarks, I think many of us—I can certainly speak for myself—underestimated this… there is not yet evidence that the proposed approach will work safely in practice
Correspondence – Professor Eileen Munro, to The Times letter 19th May 2025
“The government’s proposed reforms of children’s social care risk dismantling a system that has steadily improved, without clear evidence that the replacement will work. While the ambition to expand early help is welcome — indeed, my own review called for this — the plan lacks realism, rigour and a clear safety framework”… “These reforms radically restructure a complex system of professionals and safeguarding arrangements. Yet the Department for Education is altering or removing key processes without asking why they exist or how they interact with other checks and balances. What looks tidy on paper (neatly divided ‘pillars’ of reform) may create dangerous, unpredictable consequences in practice as they interact”…
