For many children and young people, August means holidays, long days, family trips and a break from school. For children and young people living in children’s homes and supported accommodation, summer can feel rather different.

School provides much more than education. It gives structure to the day, predictable routines, regular relationships with trusted adults, contact with friends and somewhere to be.

When school stops for six weeks, much of that structure disappears.

At the same time, summer can bring changes within the home or service itself. Staff take annual leave. Rotas change. Familiar workers may be away. Activities and holidays are planned. Family contact arrangements may change.

And young people are surrounded by conversations about holidays, families and what everyone else is doing. This makes summer an important period for providers to think about deliberately.

Summer can amplify feelings of difference

There is a very ordinary conversation that happens in workplaces throughout August:

“I’m off next week. We’re taking the kids away.”

There is nothing wrong with staff talking about their lives or taking well-earned annual leave. But we should remain curious about how those conversations might be experienced by children and young people.

For a child who cannot live with their own family, hearing about the holidays staff are taking with their children can reinforce a painful distinction: you have a family and a life to go home to; caring for me is your job.

A young person may never articulate this. Instead, we might see irritability, withdrawal, rejection of staff, challenging behaviour or apparent indifference.

Good practice requires us to look beyond the behaviour and remain curious about what might be happening underneath it.

Language matters: call it a holiday

The language we use can either make a home feel more ordinary or remind children and young people that they are living in a service. During the summer, staff will inevitably be away at different times. In professional conversations, rotas and HR processes, we might describe this as annual leave.

But is that the language we should use with children and young people? We would argue that it isn’t. If a member of staff is going on holiday, say they are going on holiday.

“I’m on annual leave next week” is the language of employment. It reminds everyone that the adult works there and that the home is also their workplace. Children don’t have annual leave. Families don’t generally tell one another they are taking annual leave. They talk about holidays. This may seem like a very small distinction, but creating a genuine sense of home is often about small things.

Children living in residential care already encounter enough institutional language: shifts, handovers, key-work sessions, risk assessments, placement plans, professionals and meetings. We do not need to introduce workplace terminology into ordinary conversations where everyday language would do.

Of course, staff should remain sensitive about how they talk about their own holidays, particularly where conversations about family experiences may be difficult for an individual child. But sensitivity should not mean making the environment more clinical or institutional.

If it’s a holiday, call it a holiday.

The words we choose contribute to the culture we create. A children’s home should feel as much like a home as possible, and sometimes that starts with speaking like people who live together rather than people who work in a service.

Don’t just fill the calendar

One understandable response to the long summer break is to create an extensive activity programme. Activities are important. Young people should have opportunities to enjoy themselves, try new experiences and make positive memories. But a full calendar is not necessarily a good summer.

Providers should ask:

What does this particular young person want their summer to look like?

For one young person, a theme park may be exciting. Another may want to spend time with friends, go shopping, play football, visit family, learn to cook something new or simply have a few days when nobody has planned anything for them.

Children’s homes should be homes, including during the summer.

Supported accommodation should continue to promote increasing independence and preparation for adulthood, rather than becoming an activity service simply because education has stopped.

The starting point should therefore be conversation with each child or young person, not the staff activity planner.

Protect important relationships

Annual leave is inevitable and healthy. The issue is not whether staff take holidays but how services manage continuity around them. Think particularly about young people who have strong relationships with specific members of staff.

• Do they know that person is going away?
• Do they know when they are coming back?
• Who will be available while they are away?

Are several important adults disappearing from the rota at the same time?

Something that feels like an ordinary staffing arrangement to a manager can feel like another significant adult disappearing to a child who has experienced repeated loss and disrupted relationships.

Good rota planning during summer should therefore consider relational continuity as well as staffing numbers.

Maintain some predictability

The absence of school does not mean the absence of routine. Six completely unstructured weeks can be difficult, particularly for children and young people who rely on predictability to feel secure. That does not mean recreating a school timetable.

It means maintaining enough rhythm to everyday life: reasonable sleep patterns, meals, planned activities, appointments, household responsibilities, contact with important people and opportunities to get out of the home.

For young people approaching independence, summer can also provide opportunities to develop practical skills in a natural way: planning journeys, budgeting for days out, shopping, cooking, arranging activities, managing money and organising their own time.

Think carefully about family

Summer is strongly associated with family. That can make it particularly complicated for children who are separated from theirs. Some young people may have more family contact during the holidays. Others may have hoped for contact or visits that cannot happen. Plans may change. Siblings may have different arrangements. A young person may see friends spending weeks with their families while they remain in placement.

Providers should anticipate that these experiences may have an emotional impact rather than waiting for a crisis or incident. Key-work conversations can explore what the young person wants from the summer, who they would like to spend time with and whether there are important relationships they want support to maintain.

Where plans cannot happen, be honest and help the young person manage the disappointment rather than avoiding the conversation.

Create memories, not just activities

There is another question worth asking:

What will this young person remember about this summer?

Some of our strongest childhood memories come from school holidays, and they are rarely about expensive activities. A barbecue in the garden. Going to the seaside. Staying up late to watch a film. Playing football in the park. Cooking together. A spontaneous ice cream. A day when everyone laughed.

Children in residential care deserve those ordinary memories too.

Young people in supported accommodation should also have opportunities for enjoyment and connection alongside the important work of preparing for adulthood. Not everything needs to become an “outcome”, a formal key-work session or evidence for a support plan. Sometimes a good day is simply a good day.

A summer check for managers

During August, managers and leaders might use supervision, team meetings and handovers to keep asking a few simple questions:

• What does each young person want from their summer?
• Who are the important people in their life, and how are we helping maintain those relationships?
• Which staff relationships are particularly important, and how are annual leave arrangements affecting them?
• Is there enough structure without over-programming the young person’s time?
• Are we noticing changes in behaviour and exploring what may sit behind them?
• Are young people involved in choosing and planning activities?
• Are we supporting appropriate time with friends, family and the wider community?
• For young people in supported accommodation, are we using the summer to promote independence without turning every experience into a formal intervention?
• Are there young people watching everyone else go on holiday while feeling that nothing is happening for them?
• Most importantly: does each child or young person feel that they belong somewhere this summer?

Summer presents challenges for children’s homes and supported accommodation services, but it also presents an opportunity. Without the demands of school and college, there can be more time to talk, spend time together, strengthen relationships and give children and young people experiences they genuinely value.

The aim should not simply be to get through the six-week holidays without incidents. It should be to make sure that, when September arrives, children and young people can look back and feel that their summer mattered too.