Department for Education confirms five new Regional Care Co-operatives, bringing total to seven

Together with the two existing pathfinders, the seven RCCs now cover more than 100 local authorities across England.

Regional Care Co-operatives are partnerships between social workers, care providers and other key services like the police and health workers that operate across multiple local authority areas to deliver better outcomes for children in care.

According to the Department for Education (DfE), the new model will give local areas “real control over the care market for the first time” – driving out profiteering, eliminating unregistered and poor-quality placements, and ensuring children are placed closer to home in settings that meet their needs.

Meanwhile, the government announced that:

• Four new Fostering Hubs – Black Country, North London, South East London and South West London – will go live before the end of the year, bringing the national total to 14.

• A consultation has launched on new, simplified fostering standards, consolidating existing guidance into a single document with enduring relationships at the centre of every requirement.

• The Room Makers programme is expanding to all Hubs and RCCs, providing financial support for foster carers looking to renovate or expand their home to take on more children. It will be delivered through Fostering Hubs and RCCs.

• Applications have opened for the £23.1m Home Again programme, which will fund up to five RCCs and their partners to provide children with the most complex needs with a single, co-ordinated plan drawing together social care, health, education and youth justice.

Children and Families Minister Josh MacAlister said: “Too many children in care have been let down – placed miles from home in expensive, unsuitable settings, some even locked away, while unscrupulous providers have extracted excessive profits from a system meant to protect them.

“We are expanding the new model of children’s care, which means better supported foster families, real control over the children’s care sector for local authorities and personalised support for the most vulnerable children. This is what a care system that puts children first looks like.”

Commenting on the announcement, James Arrowsmith, Partner in social care at Browne Jacobson, said: “The decision to reframe fostering standards around quality and relationships, rather than minimum compliance requirements, is both welcome and overdue. As the expectations placed on foster carers have grown, it is right that the framework they operate within keeps pace. The emphasis on enduring, loving relationships as the organising principle for the standards reflects a maturing understanding of what children in care actually need – not bureaucratic process, but stability, trust and belonging.

“From our experience of working on the RCC programme via the pathfinder projects, we believe this model has real potential to shift the dynamic in local children's care markets, giving local authorities the collective influence they have lacked as individual commissioners.

“The foundations these organisations are built on matter enormously – a shared vision across member authorities, governance structures that are fit for purpose from the outset, and the organisational flexibility to develop and adapt as learning accumulates at both local and national level. The ambition is right, but the quality of implementation will determine whether it is realised.”

He continued: “The Home Again programme addresses what is arguably the most intractable challenge in the current system – children whose needs are so acute, and whose situation so complex, that the system has too often responded by attempting to contain rather than genuinely support them.

“The aspiration to bring social care, health, education and justice together around a single tailored plan for each child is exactly the right instinct. The harder question, and the one that will determine whether this initiative makes a lasting difference, is whether system partners can be brought together in a genuinely collaborative way, rather than simply co-ordinated on paper.”

The five new Regional Care Cooperatives have been confirmed in London, the North East, East Midlands, West Midlands and Cheshire and Merseyside.