Understanding the Children's Homes Quality Standards

Practice guides · Published 16 August 2026 · Last updated 16 August 2026

If you work in a children's home in England, the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 are the legal foundation of your job. Regulations 6 to 14 set out nine quality standards. They are deliberately written as outcomes for children, not as tick-lists for adults, and Ofsted inspects against them under the social care common inspection framework (SCCIF). The Guide to the Children's Homes Regulations including the quality standards, published in April 2015, explains how each standard should be interpreted, and every member of staff should have read it.

The standards are not paperwork that lives in the office. They describe what a good shift looks like. Here is each one, and what it means when you are the adult in the building.

Regulation 6: The quality and purpose of care standard

Children must receive care that meets their individual needs, in a home that is nurturing, safe and well maintained, and that matches its statement of purpose. On shift this means knowing what your home says it offers and who it is for, because you should be able to explain how the care you give reflects it. It also covers the physical environment: a scruffy, institutional building tells children what you think of them. Broken furniture reported and fixed quickly, bedrooms personalised, and a home that feels like a home are all Regulation 6 matters.

Regulation 7: The children's views, wishes and feelings standard

Children must be consulted and their views taken seriously in day-to-day decisions and in their plans, and they must know how to complain and be supported to do so. In practice: house meetings that actually change things, asking children about menus, activities, decoration and rules, recording their views in their own words, and never treating a complaint as an inconvenience or disloyalty. A child who complains is using the system exactly as intended.

Regulation 8: The education standard

Children must be supported to make measurable progress in education and to attend consistently. On shift this means school runs done reliably and on time, homework supported in the evening, attendance problems chased and understood rather than shrugged at, liaison with schools and virtual school heads, and celebrating educational achievement as loudly as anything else. If a child is out of education, the home should be pushing hard, every week, for provision.

Regulation 9: The enjoyment and achievement standard

Children must be able to develop interests, take part in activities and enjoy their childhood. This is the standard that says fun is a professional duty. Clubs, sport, hobbies, birthdays done properly, trips, and ordinary experiences such as cinema visits and cooking together all count. The test is whether this child, with their interests, is getting a rich life, not whether the home once bought a games console.

Regulation 10: The health and well-being standard

Children's physical, emotional and mental health needs must be met, including registration with GPs and dentists, attendance at appointments, and access to specialist and therapeutic support. On shift: medication given and recorded accurately, health appointments prioritised like school, emotional well-being noticed and acted on, and healthy food and routines modelled rather than lectured. Staff should know each child's health plan, allergies and current concerns without needing to look them up mid-crisis.

Regulation 11: The positive relationships standard

Children must be helped to build positive relationships with staff, other children, family and friends, and behaviour must be managed through relationships, with restraint used only when necessary and proportionate (see also Regulation 20 on restraint). This is the heart of residential work: warm, consistent, boundaried relationships; contact with family supported in line with each child's plan; conflict between children handled fairly; and consequences that are restorative and proportionate rather than punitive. Blanket sanctions and group punishments sit badly with this standard.

Regulation 12: The protection of children standard

Children must be protected from harm, and the home must assess and manage risk without wrapping children in cotton wool. On shift this means knowing each child's risk assessment and safety plan, following missing-from-home procedures precisely, understanding exploitation risks including criminal and sexual exploitation and county lines, supervising in line with plans, and reporting concerns immediately through safeguarding procedures. It also means enabling safe risk-taking, because children learn by doing, and a home that never lets a child out of sight is failing this standard in a different way.

Regulation 13: The leadership and management standard

The registered person must lead a home with high ambitions, a workforce that is skilled, supported and supervised, and a culture of continuous improvement. Frontline staff feel this standard through supervision that actually happens, team meetings that discuss children rather than only rotas, training that is completed and used, and a manager who knows the children well. If you are asked at inspection whether you feel supported and how the manager monitors quality, this is the standard behind the question.

Regulation 14: The care planning standard

Children must only be admitted when the home can meet their needs alongside those of children already living there, and their care must follow up-to-date plans, with proper preparation for moving in and moving on. On shift this means impact risk assessments before admissions, keyworker sessions that connect to the child's relevant plans, contributions to looked-after child reviews, and transitions planned weeks ahead rather than announced in a bin bag on the day.

How the standards fit together

Each standard has the same structure: an outcome for children, followed by a list of things the registered person must ensure. Ofsted does not inspect them as nine separate boxes; inspectors look at the experiences and progress of children and trace them back to the standards. That is why the best preparation for inspection is not memorising regulation numbers but being able to talk, child by child, about needs, plans, progress and how you keep them safe.

Dos and don'ts

Dos

• Read your home's statement of purpose and the Guide to the Children's Homes Regulations, and be able to say how your practice reflects them.
• Know each child's care plan, risk assessment and health needs before you need them in a crisis.
• Record children's views in their own words and show what changed as a result.
• Treat education and health appointments as non-negotiable priorities.
• Plan enjoyable, ordinary childhood experiences deliberately, for each individual child.
• Use relationships, de-escalation and restorative approaches as your first tools for behaviour.
• Report maintenance issues, safeguarding concerns and missing episodes promptly and follow them up.

Don'ts

• Don't treat the standards as office paperwork separate from your shift.
• Don't use blanket rules, group sanctions or punitive consequences that ignore individual needs and plans.
• Don't dismiss complaints or grumbles; they are evidence of a home where children feel able to speak.
• Don't accept a child being out of education as normal or unavoidable.
• Don't let restraint become routine; it must be necessary, proportionate and always recorded and reviewed.
• Don't support an admission or a move without honest thought about impact on every child in the home.