From October all providers of supported accommodation will be required to adhere to mandatory national quality standards, which will be overseen by Ofsted-led registration and inspection following a ban on the use of these settings for under-16s in September 2021.
The NCB, alongside the Department for Education and Ofsted, will run a new sector awareness and provider preparedness programme in relation to the new quality standards, registration and regulation regime for such settings.
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Unregulated accommodation for 16- and 17-year-olds cannot be normalised
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Put end to unregulated provision for under-18s, urge campaigners
NCB’s role will focus on raising sector awareness about the new requirements and helping providers prepare for the new system of oversight and “ultimately ensuring that young people living in supported accommodation develop trusted relationships and experience high-quality support in nurturing environments that prepare them for adult life,” according to the organisation.
The programme will include:
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National conferences in the early registration period.
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Virtual communities of practice for both local authority commissioners and providers of supported accommodation.
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Sector-wide mapping of approaches to decision-making, placement pathways and needs assessment to identify and share good practice.
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A workforce development programme tailored to the needs of the provider workforce building on the quality standards (e.g. trauma-informed practice)
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Tools and resources developed with care-experienced young people and providers.
Anna Feuchtwang, NCB’s chief executive, said: "We are pleased to be working with the supported accommodation sector to ensure that providers understand their responsibilities and make the necessary preparations to enable them to register under the new regime. We hope and expect that the programme activity will support and enable providers to take these reforms as far as possible to ensure the needs of young people are met through high-quality support.
“These standards are an important step in ensuring that 16- and 17-year-olds in care are appropriately safeguarded in their homes and are offered crucial support for their health, education and wellbeing.”
The introduction of quality standards for supported accommodation for 16- and 17-year-olds has split opinion across the sector since it was first proposed by then Education Secretary Gavin Williamson in 2019.
The #KeepCaringTo18 movement, spearheaded by children’s rights charity Article 39, has seen practitioners, academics and charity leaders come together to call for an outright ban of settings that do not provide care for all children aged under 18.
Carolyne Willow, director of Article 39, said: "It's difficult to comprehend why any children's charity would volunteer to actively promote standards for children in care aged 16 and 17 which deliberately omit any requirement for them to receive day-to-day care; allow providers to register bedsits, shared child/adult houses and hostels, caravans and boats as homes for children; and rely upon three-yearly Ofsted inspections of only a sample of accommodation.
"We're proud that almost 70 organisations are part of the #KeepCaringTo18 campaign, which insists on equality of care for all looked after children, and we'll always be grateful to the many thousands who signed the petition that went to 10 Downing Street.
"Law and policy relating to children in care has, for decades, stressed the importance of emulating what children experience in loving families and asking ourselves would this be good enough for our own children. We will keep fighting to get us back to those principles. The challenge is not that the care-less standards and inspection plans don't go far enough; they are fundamentally flawed, having been developed in the context of sustained inadequate funding rather than with the best interests of children uppermost."
