The Department for Education’s policy paper, Enduring Relationships, was published on 6th June 2026 and sets out the ambition that children in care and care-experienced young people should grow up with trusted, lasting relationships that give them safety, belonging and confidence into adulthood.
The paper recognises that care protects the relationships that matter to a child, and helps new ones to grow, but also finds disruption through distance, instability, poor matching, repeated moves and a focus on immediate risk rather than lifelong belonging.
Enduring relationships are described in terms of consistent relationships that offer emotional security, warmth, responsiveness and shared experience. They are not defined by professionals alone. They are defined by the child, as the expert of their own experience. They may include parents, brothers and sisters, wider family, friends, neighbours, teachers, youth workers, former carers or other adults who know and care about them.
The policy links this approach to the wider children’s social care reform, including family help, family group decision-making, kinship care, Staying Close, sufficiency of homes and stronger corporate parenting responsibilities. It also asks the sector to act now, not wait for further guidance, by placing relationships at the centre of assessment, care planning, matching, reunification, leaving care and inspection.
For residential childcare, the implications are significant. The paper is clear that, while family-based care should be prioritised where possible, there will remain a need for high-quality residential care that is purposeful, specialist and therapeutic. It also points towards a smaller, more focused residential sector, with stronger expectations around workforce development, practice models, leadership and training. This may influence how children’s homes are commissioned, where they are located, how they evidence impact, and how they demonstrate that care is helping children remain connected to the people and places that matter to them.
This is a policy issue but is also a practice question. Children’s homes will need to show that relationships are actively understood, protected and strengthened. Matching, placement planning, family time, sibling relationships, school continuity, community links, advocacy, key-work sessions, staff stability and transition planning all become part of the same relational task.
A home should not be judged only by whether it is safe and compliant, but by whether children experience it as a place where they are known, remembered and helped to belong.
The April 2026 SCCIF already places children’s experiences and progress at the centre of inspection and requires inspectors to evaluate the quality of relationships between children, carers, professionals and parents; how well staff promote belonging and stability; how well children’s views are understood; and whether contact with family, friends, previous carers and other important people is safe, meaningful and unnecessarily unrestricted.
Enduring Relationships does not therefore introduce a wholly new inspection expectation, but it sharpens the existing one: children’s homes will increasingly need to evidence that relational practice is not incidental but deliberate, assessed, safe and impactful. In inspection terms, this means showing how the home helps children remain connected to people and places that matter to them, how decisions about distance, matching, family time, siblings, school continuity and transitions protect rather than fracture belonging, and how leaders know whether these relationships are improving children’s safety, identity, stability and longer-term outcomes.
The paper also sharpens the challenge around out-of-area placements. Children’s homes are often asked to care for children at points of crisis, but distance can disrupt those relationships that may help a child recover. This does not mean such placements are never right, but I think it does mean that decisions (and a child’s understanding) about distance, contact and community connection should be evidenced and regularly reviewed by the registered manager.
The implication for practice is perhaps simple, but also profound: every decision should first consider what impact it may have to a child’s relationships. Does it protect them, repair them, strengthen them, or unnecessarily break them? Can we evidence this during inspection? For care-experienced children, enduring relationships are not an additional benefit. They are the thread through which identity, safety, love and hope are held.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/enduring-relationships-for-care-experienced-children/enduring-relationships