The Department for Education’s white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, is not, at first reading, a children’s homes document. It is an education policy paper, concerned with schools, curriculum, SEND, attendance, enrichment, behaviour, workforce and accountability. However, for those working in residential childcare, it should not be read as something belonging only to schools. Its central message is wider than education: children should be helped to achieve, to belong, and to thrive within a network of adults and services that understand them, support them and hold ambition on their behalf (Department for Education, 2026).
This matters for children living in children’s homes because the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 already require providers to do more than keep children safe. Safety is fundamental, but it is not the whole task. The quality standards expect children to receive care which promotes their welfare, supports their education, enables enjoyment and achievement, listens to their views, protects them from harm, promotes positive relationships and is led by adults who understand the purpose and impact of the home (Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015; Department for Education, 2015).
There is therefore a clear intersection between the white paper and the regulatory framework for children’s homes. Regulation 8, the education standard, requires children to make measurable progress, to be supported to attend and engage in education, and to benefit from learning that is consistent with their needs, abilities and aspirations. The white paper’s emphasis on attendance, belonging, inclusive mainstream education, SEND support, enrichment and stronger partnerships between schools, local authorities, health and wider services should therefore be directly relevant to residential care practice (Department for Education, 2026).
The policy paper also speaks to regulation 7, the children’s views, wishes and feelings standard. Its language of engagement, participation, belonging and children becoming active participants in their learning is important. For children in residential care, education cannot simply be a placement plan target or a line in a daily record. It needs to be experienced by the child as meaningful, possible and connected to their identity, interests and future. Staff in children’s homes are often the adults who make that bridge: noticing when school is becoming unsafe or unbearable, advocating when a child’s needs are misunderstood, and helping the child to recover confidence after exclusion, absence or repeated educational disruption.
The white paper’s emphasis on SEND is particularly significant. Many children in residential care have overlapping experiences of trauma, disability, unmet learning needs, interrupted education and emotional distress. A stronger inclusive education system, if realised in practice, may reduce the extent to which children are moved out of local learning communities, placed in unsuitable provision, or left waiting for specialist support. However, this will only benefit children in homes if residential staff are treated as active partners in education planning, not peripheral carers who are informed after decisions have already been made.
There is also a safeguarding dimension. The corrected version of the white paper refers to education as a strategic partner in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and to the inclusion of education in new multi-agency child protection teams (Department for Education, 2026). This aligns with regulation 12, the protection of children standard. Children’s homes should expect schools to be part of the safeguarding network around the child, but homes must also ensure that information is shared carefully, promptly and with professional curiosity. Attendance, exclusion, peer relationships, online risks, changes in behaviour and withdrawal from learning may all be safeguarding information, not merely education information.
For the residential sector, the practical implications are clear. Homes will need to evidence how they promote attendance, respond to barriers to learning, advocate for SEND support, support enrichment, and help children experience school as a place where they can belong. Regulation 14, the care planning standard, is also relevant: the child’s day-to-day care, education, health and relationships should not sit in separate professional compartments. A child’s Personal Education Plan, EHCP, risk assessments, placement plan and key-work should tell one coherent story about what the child needs, what adults are doing, and whether this is making a difference.
The white paper is strongest where it recognises that schools cannot do this alone. Its call for services to wrap around children and families echoes what good residential childcare has long understood: children do not thrive because one professional writes a good plan. They thrive when adults notice, remember, persist, communicate and act together. In that sense, the paper’s ambition is welcome. It gives renewed policy weight to the idea that attainment and wellbeing are not competing priorities but connected parts of the same childhood.
There are, however, questions for implementation. Children living in children’s homes are often those for whom systems have already failed to join up. They may have moved home, school and local authority. They may carry a history of exclusion, drift or professional delay. The residential sector will need to be alert to whether the white paper’s ambitions reach these children in practice, or whether they remain framed around the more settled child with a consistent school, family and community.
For children’s homes, the challenge is therefore both regulatory and moral. The regulations already require homes to be ambitious for children. Every Child Achieving and Thriving strengthens the policy context for that ambition. It invites the residential sector to look again at education not as a separate service, but as a central part of care: a route to confidence, belonging, opportunity and adulthood. The test will not be whether the language is persuasive but whether children living in residential care feel its benefit in their daily lives.
References
Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015, SI 2015/541. London: The Stationery Office.
Department for Education (2015) Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations including the quality standards. London: Department for Education.
Department for Education (2026) Every Child Achieving and Thriving. CP 1508-I. London: Department for Education.