Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026: What Children’s Social Care Providers Need to Know

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 introduces wide ranging changes across children’s social care, safeguarding and education, with several important implications for Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation providers.

Its overall aim is to strengthen support for children and families, improve safeguarding and help prevent children from falling through gaps between services. It also introduces changes affecting the regulation of children’s social care, care leavers and how different agencies work together.

We explored this topic during a dedicated webinar, hosted by Ex Ofsted inspector Marie Born. Here, we’ve summarised some of the key points for residential care providers and their teams.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026: Summary

For children’s social care, some of the most important areas covered by the Act include:

• stronger multi-agency safeguarding and information sharing
• increased regulatory oversight of children’s social care providers
• changes affecting agency workers
• greater protection for 16 and 17-year-olds
• extended support for care leavers
• strengthened corporate parenting responsibilities
• new provisions around deprivation of liberty.

The Act also contains substantial education reforms, including measures relating to school meals, school uniforms, children not in school and the role of education in safeguarding.

For children’s homes providers, however, there are several areas that deserve particular attention.

1. Stronger Ofsted Powers and Provider-Level Oversight

One significant development is the strengthening of regulatory oversight across children’s social care.

The Act gives the Chief Inspector additional powers in relation to provider groups and monetary penalties. This is intended to make it easier to respond where concerns extend across multiple settings within the same organisation, rather than treating each home entirely in isolation.

The legislation also introduces provisions for greater financial oversight and the ability to limit profits of relevant providers in the future.

For organisations operating multiple services, this reinforces the importance of being able to see what is happening across the organisation – from safeguarding and incidents to actions, staffing and compliance.

Centralised dashboards and reporting give Directors, Responsible Individuals and managers greater visibility across their services, helping teams identify patterns, monitor actions and maintain consistent records across multiple homes.

2. Safeguarding Becomes Even More Joined Up

Another major theme running through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is better collaboration between the organisations surrounding a child.

The Act strengthens the role of education and childcare within local safeguarding arrangements, provides for multi-agency child protection teams and introduces measures designed to improve information sharing between services.

This reflects a simple principle: important information about a child should not remain isolated within one organisation when sharing it appropriately could help keep them safe.

For providers, effective safeguarding therefore depends not only on recording concerns, but on ensuring information is clear, accessible and capable of being acted upon.

This is where consistent recording becomes particularly important. Incidents, risks, actions, daily observations and safeguarding information need to create a clear picture over time – particularly when several professionals or agencies are involved.

3. Greater Protection for 16 and 17-Year-Olds

The Act extends protection against ill-treatment or wilful neglect to 16 and 17 year olds in specified care settings.

As covered in our webinar, this is particularly relevant to Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation. The change means care workers and providers can now be prosecuted for the ill-treatment or wilful neglect of the young person in their care, extending protections that previously applied only up to age 16.

For providers, this reinforces the importance of clear processes, good quality records and ensuring teams can demonstrate how concerns have been identified, escalated and responded to.

4. Changes Around Agency Workers

Workforce stability is another area addressed by the legislation.

The Act creates powers for the Secretary of State to regulate the use of agency workers within local authority children’s social care, including requirements around who can undertake agency work, how workers are managed and the terms under which they can be supplied.

Our webinar also explored the wider rules around agency working, including post-qualifying experience and restrictions around moving from permanent local authority employment into agency work.

For care providers, the wider direction of travel reinforces the importance being placed on workforce stability, experience and accountability across children’s services.

5. More Support for Care Leavers Through Staying Close

The Act also strengthens support for young people as they transition from care into adulthood.

Staying Close has now been placed on a statutory footing. Local authorities must consider whether eligible former relevant children under 25 require Staying Close support and, where their welfare requires it, offer support with areas including suitable accommodation, health and wellbeing, relationships, education, training and employment.

For providers, preparing for adulthood should therefore be viewed as a journey rather than a single transition point.

Mentor’s Young Person Dashboard can support this approach by helping young people engage with their own goals, progress and support journey, while giving teams a clearer way to record and review the steps towards independence.

6. Stronger Protections Around Homelessness

The Act also changes how intentional homelessness rules apply to certain care leavers.

Housing authorities will not be able to treat relevant and former relevant children as intentionally homeless in the circumstances covered by the legislation. The aim is to make sure care leavers can access accommodation and the support they need rather than facing additional barriers during an already significant transition.

Alongside this, local authorities’ published offers must include more information about how they support care leavers into adulthood, including planning for accommodation, financial literacy and support for those at risk of homelessness.

7. New Deprivation of Liberty Provisions

The Act also introduces a statutory framework concerning the deprivation of liberty of looked-after children in accommodation other than secure children’s homes.

The provisions are intended for specific circumstances where restrictions are necessary to keep a child safe. As discussed during the webinar, authorisation is time-limited, subject to regular review and should specify the maximum restrictions that may be used according to the child’s needs.

For providers involved in supporting young people subject to these arrangements, accurate care planning, risk assessment and recording will be particularly important.

What Does the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 Mean for Residential Care Providers?

There is a lot within the Act, and not every provision will affect every provider in the same way or at the same time.

However, several themes run consistently throughout it: stronger accountability, better information sharing, clearer safeguarding arrangements, improved support through transitions and greater visibility of what is happening around each young person.

For Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation providers, this makes strong everyday practice increasingly important.

That means making sure teams can:

• maintain clear, consistent records
• evidence decisions and actions
• identify and respond to safeguarding concerns
• maintain oversight across services
• involve young people in their plans and progress
• demonstrate how support is helping young people move towards positive outcomes.

Good systems won’t replace good professional judgement. But they can make it much easier for teams to record evidence and act on that judgement consistently.

At Mentor, that’s what we’re here to support.

Our all-in-one software for Children’s Homes and Supported Accommodation brings daily recording, incidents, medication, young person management, compliance and reporting together – giving frontline teams practical tools for everyday work while helping managers and senior leaders maintain oversight.

Ready to grow your service with greater confidence? Book a demo today and see how you can connect your teams, improve oversight and deliver higher quality care with Mentor.