Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the presence and use of illegal children’s homes.

The most sustainable solution to stopping the use of unregistered provision is to reduce the number of children entering care by providing whole family support at the earliest opportunity. For children who do need to come into care, the department is making family-based care the goal wherever possible. This will be done by ensuring that local authorities have access to sufficient high-quality, registered placements for those with overlapping multiple needs. The department is rolling out Regional Care Co-operatives (RCCs) across England. RCCs will strengthen local authority commissioning power, improve sufficiency planning and give local areas greater control over the provision available to meet children's needs.

Some RCCs will shortly be delivering Home Again. Home Again is an RCC-based multi-agency programme which will bring together social care, health, education and youth justice to provide earlier, coordinated and specialist support, helping children remain connected to their families and communities wherever possible and reducing reliance on crisis-driven and restrictive interventions. The programme aims to reduce the number, length and repetition of deprivation of liberty orders and improve stability and outcomes for children at risk or experiencing deprivation of liberty; children who are otherwise at high risk of placement in unregistered provision.

The government's action plan to renew fostering, backed by £88 million over the next two years, sets out the urgent steps we are taking to reverse the decline in foster carers and reform the system. The department will create 10,000 additional foster care places by the end of this parliament, strengthening support around foster families and ensuring more children can grow up in stable, loving homes close to their communities. Subsequently, this will reduce the demand on placing vulnerable children in residential settings and halting the increase in the number of unregistered settings.

The government is also investing £53 million to help local authorities create specialist placements in high-quality, local authority-run children’s homes for children with the most complex needs, increasing suitable registered supply.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 has strengthened Ofsted’s powers by enabling it to levy uncapped monetary penalties on providers operating illegally, alongside existing prosecution powers. The department also recognises that better national data is required. Statistics on the number of children looked after in unregistered settings in England will be published in November 2026.