Children’s Services Calendar 2026

Key Dates, Awareness Days and Regulatory Milestones for Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation

Planning ahead is one of the biggest challenges for leaders in children’s services. Between inspections, staffing pressures, changing legislation and the day to day realities of care, it’s easy for key dates to creep up unexpectedly.

Most confident services don’t just react to deadlines, they plan for them. Awareness days, regulatory milestones and inspection cycles all offer natural moments to review practice, evidence compliance, and support both young people and staff in meaningful ways.

To help providers prepare for the year ahead, we’ve pulled together a practical overview of key 2026 awareness days and regulatory dates, with guidance on how children’s homes and supported accommodation services can use them to strengthen governance, safety and inspection readiness.

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Forward Planning 

Regulation in children’s services continues to evolve, particularly for supported accommodation providers. Alongside this, Ofsted expectations increasingly focus on leadership oversight, evidence of learning and consistency across services.

Planning your year around known milestones helps:

• Reduce last minute pressure before inspections
• Spread compliance activity evenly across the year
• Support consistent practice across homes
• Strengthen audit trails and governance evidence
• Give staff and young people clarity and structure

For multi-home and group home providers, a shared annual calendar also helps align leadership focus across services while still allowing flexibility at a local level.

Key Regulatory and Compliance Dates to Plan for in 2026

While inspection dates themselves are not always known in advance, there are several fixed or cyclical regulatory milestones that providers can plan around.

Regulation 44 and Regulation 45 Reviews (Children’s Homes)

Regulation 44 Independent Visits (Monthly)

Children’s homes must continue to facilitate monthly independent visits under Regulation 44. While these happen throughout the year, services often benefit from planning internal checks ahead of visits, such as:

• Reviewing incident logs
• Checking training compliance
• Updating risk assessments
• Capturing young people’s feedback

Many providers use the start of each quarter as a natural prompt to prepare for upcoming visits and review actions from previous reports.

Regulation 45 Quality of Care Review (Six-Monthly)

The Regulation 45 review is a key leadership responsibility and should be completed at least every six months. Many providers align these reviews to spring and autumn, allowing time to reflect on trends, learning and progress.

Forward planning ensures:

• Evidence is gathered consistently, not retrospectively
• Themes are reviewed at group level
• Action plans are realistic and measurable

Regulation 32 Reviews (Supported Accommodation)

For supported accommodation providers, Regulation 32 reviews must be completed at least every six months and submitted to Ofsted within 28 days of completion.

These reviews require:

• Evidence of young people’s experiences and outcomes
• Safeguarding and incident analysis
• Feedback from staff and placing authorities
• Learning and improvement actions

Many services choose to schedule Regulation 32 reviews at set points in the year, such as April and October, to support structured evidence gathering and leadership review.

Ofsted Inspection Cycles

While inspections are often unannounced, providers can still plan for inspection readiness by working to an internal cycle.

Common planning approaches include:

• Quarterly internal audits
• Mid year “inspection readiness” reviews
• Annual policy and procedure reviews
• Regular mock inspections or thematic audits

Aligning these activities with known awareness days and regulatory deadlines helps reduce duplication and ensures evidence is inspection ready at any point in the year.

Annual Policy and Risk Review Cycles

Most providers are required to review policies, procedures and risk assessments at least annually. Common areas include:

• Safeguarding
• Fire safety and health & safety
• Missing from care procedures
• Behaviour support plans
• Online safety and exploitation risk

Many organisations schedule these reviews in quieter operational periods, such as early spring or late summer, to ensure changes are embedded before peak inspection periods.

Workforce and Training Compliance Dates

Forward planning is particularly helpful for workforce compliance, including:

• Mandatory training refreshers
• First aid renewals
• Safeguarding updates
• Fire safety training
• Supervision and appraisal cycles

Mapping training deadlines across the year reduces last minute gaps and supports consistent compliance across homes.

Using Awareness Days to Support Regulatory Evidence

Awareness days are most effective when linked directly to regulatory outcomes. For example:

• Safeguarding awareness days can feed into Reg 45 or Reg 32 reviews
• Mental health weeks can support evidence of wellbeing and emotional support
• Fire safety awareness activities can be logged as evidence of training and drills
• Care Leavers Week can evidence transition planning and independence work

Rather than creating additional work, these moments can be used to strengthen existing audit trails.

Planning at Group Level for Multi-Home Providers

For group home organisations, a shared compliance calendar helps leadership teams:

• Align expectations across homes
• Monitor progress consistently
• Identify group risks early
• Support managers proactively

Many providers choose to plan a combination of group wide compliance deadlines and local service level activities for group efficiency.

Making Planning Practical with Digital Systems

One of the biggest challenges providers face is keeping track of what needs to happen and when. Digital systems like Mentor help teams plan ahead by:

• Scheduling audits and reviews
• Tracking actions and deadlines
• Linking activities to young people’s records
• Providing oversight dashboards for leaders

When planning is built into everyday systems, compliance becomes easier to manage and less stressful for teams.

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Preparing for 2026 with Confidence

2026 will bring continued growth, scrutiny and opportunity for children’s services. Providers who plan ahead – aligning awareness days, regulatory deadlines and internal review cycles will be best placed to demonstrate strong leadership, consistent practice and positive outcomes for young people.

At Mentor, we support children’s service providers across the UK to plan, evidence and oversee quality throughout the year. Speak to our UK based team today to see how Mentor can support your 2026 planning.