Ofsted has published its annual Children’s Social Care in England 2026 statistics, providing an important picture of the size, growth and inspection performance of regulated children’s social care services across England.
The headline figures show a sector continuing to expand rapidly, but the picture is very different depending on the type of provision.
Children’s homes and supported accommodation continue to grow significantly, while the number of independent fostering agencies has remained relatively stable. Inspection outcomes also reveal some important differences across the sector.
For providers, the figures raise wider questions about quality, leadership, sufficiency, workforce development and the ability of services to demonstrate the difference they make to children and young people.
A rapidly expanding sector
As at 31 March 2026, there were approximately 6,700 active or suspended children’s social care providers in England, excluding local authorities and Cafcass.
That represents a 20% increase in just one year.
However, growth has not been evenly distributed across different types of provision. Ofsted reports:
- Children’s homes of all types: 4,800 settings – up 20%
- Supported accommodation: 1,220 providers – up 37%
- Independent fostering agencies: 340 agencies – up 1%
- Residential family centres: 120 settings – up 6%
The contrast is significant.
While residential provision and supported accommodation are expanding rapidly, the number of independent fostering agencies has remained comparatively stable.
This is important when considering the wider issue of placement sufficiency. Increasing the total number of regulated services does not necessarily mean that the system is developing the right mix of provision to meet children’s individual needs.
Children’s homes continue to grow and become smaller
There were 4,750 children’s homes in England as at 31 March 2026, excluding secure children’s homes and residential special schools registered as children’s homes.
This represents a 20% increase in a single year and a 70% increase since March 2022, when there were around 2,800 homes.
Registered capacity has also increased, but at a slower rate.
There are now approximately 16,200 registered children’s home places, an increase of 46% since 2022.
The difference between the growth in homes and the growth in places reflects another important trend: new children’s homes are generally smaller.
The average children’s home now provides around three places, compared with four among homes registered before the beginning of the inspection year.
This reflects the continuing development of smaller residential settings, potentially allowing for more individualised models of care.
But smaller does not automatically mean more personalised.
Providers still need to demonstrate that their model of care, staffing arrangements, matching decisions and workforce competence genuinely reflect the needs of the children they intend to support.
Growth does not necessarily solve sufficiency
The geographical distribution of children’s homes remains uneven.
The North West has approximately 1,250 children’s homes, representing 26% of all children’s homes in England. However, only around 18% of looked-after children come from the region. The South West, meanwhile, has only around 300 homes and 890 registered places. This illustrates a continuing challenge within children’s social care:
Increasing the overall number of placements does not necessarily mean that the right placements exist in the right places. Sufficiency is not simply a question of numbers.
A placement needs to be suitable for the individual child, able to meet their assessed needs and, wherever appropriate, enable them to maintain important relationships with family, education and their local community.
For organisations considering opening new children’s homes, this makes the quality of the location assessment, needs analysis and proposed model of care increasingly important.
Opening a home because there is general demand for placements is not the same as demonstrating that there is a clear need for the particular service being proposed.
Most children’s homes are now privately operated
Another significant feature of the data is the continued growth of private provision as Ofsted reports that 85% of children’s homes of all types are privately owned, with most new registrations also coming from the private sector. Private providers therefore play an increasingly central role in the national children’s social care system.
With that role comes increasing responsibility.
As organisations grow, providers need to ensure that their governance and quality assurance arrangements grow with them. Expansion without sufficient infrastructure can quickly create inconsistencies between homes.
For organisations operating multiple services, effective systems for auditing, supervision, Regulation 44 and 45 monitoring, workforce development, safeguarding oversight and organisational learning therefore become increasingly important.
Children’s homes: inspection outcomes remain broadly positive, but leadership remains an area to watch
During 2025–26, Ofsted carried out more than 5,500 full inspections, monitoring inspections and assurance visits across children’s homes of all types.
Of all full inspections carried out during the year 81% received a good or outstanding judgement for how well children and young people are helped and protected.
However, only 74% received a good or outstanding judgement for the effectiveness of leaders and managers.
That difference deserves attention.
Safeguarding children effectively is fundamental, but strong leadership requires more than maintaining compliant policies and procedures.
Leaders and managers need to understand what is actually happening within their services and demonstrate that they identify weaknesses and take effective action when improvements are required.
Providers should therefore be able to demonstrate:
- effective oversight of practice
- meaningful supervision
- confident and competent staff
- learning from incidents and safeguarding concerns
- effective quality assurance
- evidence that identified weaknesses lead to improvement
- a clear understanding of children’s experiences and progress.
As inspection increasingly focuses on the impact of care rather than simply the existence of processes, providers need to connect their records, management oversight and quality assurance activity directly to outcomes for children.
Fostering presents a very different picture
The figures for fostering are particularly interesting when compared with the rapid expansion of residential care and supported accommodation.
As at 31 March 2026, there were 340 independent fostering agencies (IFAs) in England.
That represents an increase of just 1% compared with the previous year.
The contrast is striking:
- Children’s homes increased by 20%.
- Supported accommodation providers increased by 37%.
- Independent fostering agencies increased by only 1%.
Ofsted’s figures do not, on their own, tell us why these different patterns are occurring. Nor does this particular publication provide the detailed picture of fostering households, foster carers, recruitment, retention or placement availability contained within Ofsted’s separate fostering statistics. Nevertheless, the contrast is important.
The significant expansion of residential and supported accommodation provision is happening alongside a largely stable number of independent fostering agencies. For commissioners, providers and the wider sector, this reinforces the importance of considering sufficiency across the whole continuum of care, rather than looking at individual types of provision in isolation.
Inspection outcomes for fostering remain very strong
The inspection profile for independent fostering agencies is also notably positive.
Of the 330 IFAs with a published inspection outcome as at 31 March 2026:
- 27% were outstanding
- 67% were good
- 4% required improvement to be good
- 2% were inadequate
This means that 94% of independent fostering agencies with a published inspection outcome were rated good or outstanding. That compares favourably with many other parts of children’s social care. However, strong sector-wide inspection outcomes should not lead to complacency.
Fostering agencies continue to operate within a challenging environment where the quality of recruitment, assessment, matching, supervision, support and retention of foster carers all directly affect children’s experiences.
For fostering providers, strong quality assurance should therefore extend beyond inspection readiness and consider the quality and impact of practice throughout the child’s placement journey.
Supported accommodation continues to expand rapidly
Supported accommodation has experienced the fastest percentage growth among the major provider types within the publication.
As at 31 March 2026, there were 1,220 registered providers operating 9,350 open or pending premises providing around 24,700 places. The number of providers increased by 37% during the year with around 88% of supported accommodation providers are privately operated.
The scale of the sector is therefore becoming significant, but inspection remains at a relatively early stage. Only 210 of the 1,220 active or suspended providers (around 17%) had a published full inspection outcome by 31 March 2026.
Of those inspected:
- 45% received an outcome of consistently strong service delivery
- 48% were assessed as providing inconsistent quality of service delivery
- 7% were found to have serious or widespread weaknesses.
These figures need to be interpreted carefully because the majority of registered providers had not yet received a published full inspection outcome. Nevertheless, there is an important message here.
Among the providers that had been inspected, more than half had not demonstrated consistently strong service delivery.
What should supported accommodation providers take from this?
Supported accommodation is no longer simply a new regulatory concept. The sector is moving from the initial challenge of registration towards a much greater focus on the quality and consistency of delivery.
Providers should therefore be asking themselves:
- Can we demonstrate how support is helping each young person develop independence?
- Are support plans translated into meaningful day-to-day work with young people?
- Can staff explain why they are providing particular support, rather than simply describing what they do?
- Does management oversight identify weaknesses before an inspector does?
- Can we evidence progress rather than simply evidence activity?
This distinction is becoming increasingly important. A completed key-work session, for example, demonstrates that an activity happened. It does not necessarily demonstrate that the young person developed a skill, increased their confidence or became more independent as a result. Quality assurance therefore needs to move beyond checking whether records exist and increasingly examine the quality and impact of practice.
Different sectors, different pressures but a common expectation
Perhaps the most useful message from the 2026 statistics comes from looking across the different forms of provision. The picture is not uniform.
- Children’s homes are expanding rapidly and becoming smaller.
- Supported accommodation is experiencing significant growth while moving through its first cycle of inspections.
- Independent fostering agencies are comparatively stable in number and continue to achieve very strong inspection outcomes.
- Residential family centres are also growing, increasing by 6% in the last year and by 72% since March 2022.
Yet despite these differences, there is a common expectation across regulated children’s social care:
Providers must be able to demonstrate not only that systems and processes are in place, but that they result in good experiences and outcomes for children and young people.
Growth creates opportunities but also greater expectations
The 2026 statistics demonstrate a children’s social care system undergoing significant change. There are more children’s homes. substantially more supported accommodation providers and the number of independent fostering agencies remains relatively stable. And different parts of the sector are showing very different inspection profiles.
But growth alone cannot be the measure of success.
The more important question is whether the system is developing the right services, in the right locations, for the right children, delivered by skilled practitioners and led by organisations capable of consistently providing high-quality care and support.
For providers, the message is therefore not simply to prepare for inspection. It is to build services where good practice can be demonstrated every day through children’s experiences, young people’s progress, staff competence, management oversight and meaningful quality assurance.
The organisations best positioned for the next stage of children’s social care regulation will not necessarily be those with the most policies or the largest number of services.
They will be those that can clearly demonstrate the connection between:
what they say they provide, what their staff actually do, and the difference this makes to children and young people.
Source: Ofsted, Children’s Social Care in England 2026, published 30 July 2026
