A deeper look at lived experiences across children’s social care

Ofsted has released the 2025 Children’s Social Care Questionnaire findings, one of the most important annual indicators of young people’s lived experience within the care system. This survey gathers direct feedback from thousands of children and young people across England who live in or receive care through:

• Foster care
• Children’s homes
• Supported accommodation (16+)
• Secure settings
• Residential schools and other specialist services
• Leaving care services

These voices matter. Not because they tell us about compliance, but because they tell us about childhood, identity, connection, and the real experience of growing up in care.

The story emerging this year is a nuanced one, hopeful, encouraging, and honest in highlighting where we can do better.

Global Analysis / Key Themes

✅ Safety as a consistent foundation

The data shows overwhelmingly that children feel safe where they live.

This is not a small achievement. Safety is the bedrock of care, emotional, physical, relational, and environmental.

Seeing safety consistently strong across settings reflects:
• continued improvement in safeguarding culture
• stronger workforce development
• increased regulation and accountability
• better trauma-informed practice
• improved placement decision-making

Safety is no longer the ambition, it is becoming the baseline, and that marks significant sector maturity.

✅ Relationships remain the heartbeat of care

Young people report trusting staff and carers, feeling comfortable talking to them, and feeling cared about. This reinforces a truth we know but must keep protecting:

Systems help / relationships heal.

Even in structured or semi-independent environments, stable caregivers, key workers, and trusted adults make the difference between supervision and support, between provision and belonging.

Across settings, young people describe connection as their most protective factor.

✅ Young people’s voices are gaining strength

Many reported that adults include them in decisions and listen to what they want. This speaks to cultural change across social care:
• co-production
• participation
• empowerment
• respect for lived experience

Young people are no longer spectators in their own lives, they are becoming active agents in care planning and daily life.

This is social care evolving from authority to partnership.

⚠️ The challenge: connection beyond services

One area stands out across the system:

Young people, especially those aged 16+ are less likely to spend regular meaningful time with people who matter to them.

This signals risk of:
• emotional isolation
• loss of identity and cultural connection
• social networks fading during transition to adulthood
• reliance on professionals as the only relationships

Care should not disconnect young people from natural love, family and belonging. We must preserve and rebuild relational networks, not unintentionally replace them with systems.

⚠️ Meaningful life experiences need greater focus

A notable minority of young people report limited fun, enrichment and enjoyable opportunities.

Care cannot only be about safety and survival.
A childhood, even in care, should still include:

✨ laughter
✨ hobbies
✨ friendships
✨ freedom to explore
✨ celebrations
✨ belonging to something bigger

Joy and normalcy must be part of the safeguarding conversation.

Protection without positive experience is containment, not care.

🏘️ Setting-By-Setting Reflections

🏠 Children’s Homes

Children’s homes continue to show strong commitment to stability, emotional warmth, and structure. Young people feel safe, supported, and listened to, particularly where homes embed trauma-informed and relational models.

What the data suggests:
• Strong relational culture is forming
• Emotional safety is improving
• Staff continuity and consistent support matter
• Homes offering activities & therapeutic culture perform best

The next step is ensuring every child in a home experiences what children outside the system experience naturally: community, friendship, celebration, choice and a sense of home, not just placement.

👨‍👩‍👧 Foster Care

Foster care continues to achieve the strongest results overall.

Young people frequently describe feeling:
✔ loved
✔ understood
✔ part of a family
✔ supported through challenges
✔ able to grow emotionally and practically

This highlights the unique strength of shared family life.
Attachment, belonging, routine, and family-style caregiving remain one of the most protective experiences a child in care can have.

The future challenge is ensuring sufficiency, stability and support for foster carers as needs and complexities rise, without losing the relational heart that makes foster care work.

🏡 Supported Accommodation (16+)

Young people in supported accommodation feel safe, respected, and positive about staff, a promising finding for a newly regulated sector.

But the data also tells us:

• Contact with family and valued people drops significantly
• Enjoyment and social engagement can be limited
• Independence risks becoming aloneness without support

Supported accommodation succeeds at:
🏷️ empowerment
🏷️ autonomy
🏷️ preparing young people for life skills
🏷️ providing safe living environments

The next evolution must be ensuring:
💬 emotional connection
💡 community belonging
👥 sustained natural relationships
🌍 continued support networks beyond the placement

Independence is meaningful only when accompanied by connection and belonging.

💬 Final Reflection

This year’s message from young people is clear:

“Keep me safe, listen to me, and help me stay connected to people who matter.”

We are seeing the system grow, from protection to participation, and increasingly to belonging.

Our next responsibility is ensuring that young people in care not only survive, but thrive, building lives filled with connection, pride, purpose, identity and hope.

Because childhood in care should never just be safe.

It should also be full, joyful, connected and dignified.