Every Child Achieving and Thriving: what does it mean for children’s homes?
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.
Policy developments since 2013: enduring relationships, advocacy and the continuing struggle to hear children
Since The child’s right? The provision of independent advocacy within the context of children’s rights was first written in 2013, the language of children’s rights, participation and advocacy has continued to move into the centre of policy discourse. Yet this has not resolved the central tension identified in the original paper: that children may possess a recognised right to be heard, but still depend upon adult systems, adult permissions and adult thresholds before that right becomes practical, timely and meaningful. The subsequent policy period has therefore been one of both development and repetition. The child’s voice has been more frequently named, and in many respects more seriously regarded, but it still too often must travel through systems that remain complex, fragmented and unevenly resourced.
There have, nevertheless, been important positive developments. Recent government policy has placed renewed emphasis on the importance of relationships for children who are care experienced. In Enduring Relationships, the Department for Education argues that children in care should be helped to sustain the people and connections that matter to them, including family members, siblings, carers, friends and wider trusted adults (2026). This is a significant shift in emphasis. It recognises that care is not only a placement, a plan or a statutory status, but a lived experience made tolerable, and sometimes transformative, through continuity, trust and belonging. Within this framework, advocacy is no longer best understood only as a complaints mechanism or procedural safeguard. It is also a means by which children can explain which relationships matter to them and why, particularly when professionals are making decisions that may alter the shape of their lives.
This policy direction strengthens, rather than softens, the argument for independent advocacy. If a care system is to take enduring relationships seriously, it must also take seriously the child’s account of those relationships. The significance of a brother, former foster carer, residential worker, grandparent, teacher, friend, neighbour or community connection may not be legible in a care plan unless the child is helped to describe it. Equally, the absence of advocacy may mean that relationships are severed not because they are unsafe or unimportant, but because no-one has supported the child to explain their meaning. Advocacy therefore becomes a relational safeguard. It helps protect the child from the administrative tidiness of adult decision-making, where permanence, placement sufficiency, risk management and resource pressures may otherwise override the quieter but deeply consequential claims of attachment, memory and belonging.
The work of the Children’s Commissioner for England also suggests that advocacy has become more visible within national scrutiny. The 2019 report Advocacy for Children focused on independent professional advocacy, to which children may be entitled by law or statutory guidance, and sought to examine the nature and consistency of provision across England (Children’s Commissioner for England). The later report, The state of children and young people’s advocacy services in England, makes an even stronger case for reform. It welcomes the movement towards proactive and opt-out advocacy but finds that the present system remains some distance from this ambition: many children are not referred, referrals do not always result in direct support, and there are continuing questions about independence, training, quality and consistency (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2023). These findings echo the concerns identified by Brady (2011) and discussed earlier in this paper: that advocacy provision can become a postcode lottery, shaped less by children’s rights than by local commissioning arrangements, professional awareness and organisational culture.
There are examples of more proactive practice. The Children’s Commissioner’s Help at Hand service has developed its work with children in care, care leavers and children living away from home, including children affected by serious concerns about the quality of their accommodation or care (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2023a). This is important because it reflects a more urgent and protective understanding of advocacy. It recognises that children may need independent help not only when they complain, but when adults are worried about the places in which they live, when placements are unstable, when moves are being considered, or when children’s own accounts of safety and belonging risk being lost within professional processes.
The question of independence remains especially important. An advocate must not only be independent in contractual or structural terms; they must be experienced by the child as independent. This distinction matters. Children who are looked after, subject to child protection processes, living in residential care, deprived of liberty, seeking asylum, disabled, or approaching adulthood through leaving care services may already be surrounded by adults who hold statutory duties, professional opinions and organisational loyalties. Some of those adults may be kind, skilled and committed, but their roles are rarely neutral. The distinctive value of advocacy lies in its capacity to stand beside the child without becoming another arm of the system. Where advocacy is commissioned by the same bodies whose decisions may need to be challenged, the appearance and reality of independence require careful protection (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2023).
The Children’s Commissioner’s more recent briefing on child victims’ access to advocacy also extends the argument beyond children who are formally looked after or making complaints about children’s social care. It identifies child victims of serious crime as a group whose need for independent advice, guidance and support is not always recognised, despite their exposure to violence, abuse, exploitation and complex justice processes (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2024). This is significant because it returns the debate to a wider rights-based foundation. Advocacy should not be understood only as a service for children already located within particular statutory categories. Rather, it is a mechanism by which children can understand their rights, navigate adult systems and be supported to speak where the consequences of silence might otherwise be profound.
There is, then, a clear line of continuity between the concerns I discussed in 2013 and the policy evidence that has followed. The language has changed, and in some respects has improved. There is now a more explicit recognition that children should not have to find advocacy by chance, through persistence, or only after harm has escalated into formal complaint. The emerging direction towards proactive, opt-out advocacy is therefore welcome, particularly if it is embedded at key points in a child’s journey: entry to care, review meetings, placement moves, changes of social worker, family time decisions, residential care concerns, preparation for leaving care, deprivation of liberty applications, and any circumstance in which the child’s relationships, safety or future are being substantially decided by others.
However, the central concern remains unresolved. Rights that depend upon professional discretion are vulnerable rights. A child who does not know that advocacy exists cannot meaningfully request it. A child who fears consequences may not ask for it. A child with communication needs may be wrongly assumed to have little to say. A child who has repeatedly been moved, disbelieved or disappointed may no longer expect adults to listen. For these children, an opt-in model is insufficient because it places the burden of access on the very person least likely to hold power within the system.
The years since 2013 have therefore not left the argument for independent advocacy behind; rather, they have strengthened it. Policy has become more relational, more rights-conscious and more willing to name the importance of children’s voices, but the practical entitlement to timely, independent and trusted advocacy remains uneven, conditional and too dependent on the adult systems it may need to challenge. The positive story is that advocacy is now more visible, more explicitly connected to children’s rights, and more closely linked to safety, relationships and lived experience. The remaining concern is that visibility is not the same as access, and access is not the same as impact.
The case for independent advocacy is therefore stronger now than it was in 2013. Not because children’s rights were less important then, but because subsequent policy and evidence have made clearer the cost of failing to translate those rights into routine practice. Advocacy should be understood as part of the infrastructure of safe and relational care. It is not an adjunct to good practice, nor a procedural courtesy to be offered when time allows. It is one of the ways in which the state can demonstrate that children in its care, or otherwise subject to its decisions, are not merely consulted but heard; not merely protected but respected; not only planned for but engaged with as rights-bearing persons whose accounts of their own lives carry weight.
The enduring question is therefore not whether children should have access to advocacy, but why access remains conditional, inconsistent and too often dependent on adult initiative and permission. If the care system now accepts that relationships endure beyond placements, meetings and episodes of intervention, then it must also accept that children need independent support to name, defend and preserve those relationships. Advocacy is not the whole answer to the failures of child voice, but without it the promise of Article 12 remains precarious, present in law and policy, but still too easily lost in practice.
References
Brady, L. (2011) Where is my advocate? A scoping report on advocacy services for children and young people in England. London: Office of the Children’s Commissioner.
Children’s Commissioner for England (2019) Advocacy for children. London: Children’s Commissioner for England.
Children’s Commissioner for England (2023) The state of children and young people’s advocacy services in England. London: Children’s Commissioner for England.
Children’s Commissioner for England (2023a) Help at Hand annual report 2022-2023. London: Children’s Commissioner for England.
Children’s Commissioner for England (2024) Child victims’ access to advocacy. London: Children’s Commissioner for England.
Department for Education (2026) Enduring relationships for care experienced children. London: Department for Education.
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1991) Convention on the Rights of the Child. Geneva: United Nations.
Enduring Relationships: a short summary
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