Placement & Homes Strategy for Children and Young People 2026 to 2030

The sufficiency landscape for children in care is shaped by both local realities and wider national challenges. Understanding this context is critical to interpreting our current position and identifying where and how we must act.

National Context Across England, local authorities are experiencing unprecedented pressure on their placement sufficiency. A growing number of children are entering care, many with increasingly complex needs – including trauma, neurodiversity, and behavioural challenges. Meanwhile, the pool of available carers is shrinking, particularly in fostering, and the independent sector continues to dominate residential provision.

This has led to an unsustainable over-reliance on high-cost, distant, and sometimes unsuitable placements, which can undermine stability and outcomes for children. National policy reviews – such as the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care (2022) and the Competition and Markets Authority report (2022) – have called for urgent system reform to rebalance the market and improve local sufficiency.

Local Context: Buckinghamshire’s children’s services have responded with purpose and pace. Since the publication of our last strategy, we have:

• Reduced the number of unregulated placements from 12 to 0 through strengthened oversight and governance.
• Initiated a major residential transformation programme, including acquisition and development of 10 local children’s homes offering 32 beds to reduce reliance on external provision, often outside the county, in turn reducing costs and enabling children placed outside the county to return to their communities, improving outcomes for children.
• Launched a comprehensive fostering improvement programme, increasing Mockingbird hubs, enhanced support, and new marketing tools. Introducing a successful perks and benefits package and customer-focused communication and recruitment strategies that significantly boosted foster carer engagement and enquiries. These achievements reversed the national downward trend in foster carer numbers locally and laid a strong foundation for continued transformation in phase two. In addition, the number of Mockingbird hubs have increased from 2 to 3. Within this model the hub home carer and liaison social worker provide peer support and guidance for foster carers alongside social activities to strengthen relationships and support placements.
• Reinforced our commissioning model by strengthening data-led planning and realigning roles between operational and strategic teams. The establishment of a new, consolidated hub supporting all commissioning and procurement activities provides substantial opportunities to explore innovative market solutions and to lead new ways of working that further enhance value for money and deliver sustainable cost reductions.

However, persistent challenges remain:

• The number of children in care has increased.
• Internal fostering capacity is not keeping pace with demand.
• Placement availability for adolescents with high-level needs is limited.
• There are significant cost pressures linked to spot-purchased residential care.

We are also seeing a shift in presenting needs – including increased mental health concerns, contextual safeguarding risks, and a rise in the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). These trends demand a more responsive, integrated, and future-proof sufficiency model.

In this strategy, we set out how we will address these challenges, build on our progress to date, and deliver a placement offer that reflects the needs and ambitions of Buckinghamshire’s children now and in the years ahead.