dialogue is a national training and consultancy provider with specialism in working with providers of residential children’s care. For more information on the support we offer visit our children’s homes page.
Why are children’s homes getting smaller?
The Registered Managers vacancy study highlighted a huge growth in the number of children’s homes fuelled by rising numbers of children in care, professional foster carers leaving the sector and a reduction in the size of children’s homes over more than a decade.
However, there is no research to indicate this leads to better outcomes.
dialogue are publishing a book on this topic in the summer of 2026 with an interdisciplinary group of residential care professionals. We are keen to involve young people in helping us all understand the value of smaller homes and are running a survey in the first two weeks of March to gather their views.
The survey will also help managers reflect on young people’s experiences in their Reg45 quality reviews.
Get involved
To help your young people contribute to the study please complete our survey tool. It asks you a few questions about your home and gives prompts to support you in having conversations with young people so that the information between homes is comparable.
It should be a really interesting conversation.
Buy the book
Our book, The Perfect Little Children’s Home, is available to preorder now at a discounted rate.
Registered Managers vacancy study
Commissioners, providers, the regulator and government are concerned at the difficulties in recruiting Registered Managers in children’s homes and Heads of Care in residential special schools. Too many posts are vacant, in some settings managers do not register with Ofsted and providers comment they are unable to grow due to recruitment issues.
We’ve been surveying managers across the sector and have produced a report, published on 1st December 2025.
Recommendations have been developed for providers, commissioners, Ofsted and the Department for Education to inform recruitment, retention and growth strategies nationally to improve the current situation, including recommendations for amendment of regulations.
John Woodhouse hosted a webinar covering these findings on the 23rd January.
Accessing the Recording: This session was recorded and will be in the dialogue Members’ Area. Members can access their members’ area by logging into their “My Account” portal.
Not a member yet? Click here to join or learn more
Download the study…
Who led the RM vacancy project?
An independent steering group came together to help focus this work on the things that matter most to children in residential care. This group was made up of:
- The Department for Education
- Ofsted
- The South West Sufficiency Programme
- The National Association of Special Schools
- The Children’s Homes Association
- A Responsible Individual representative from the South West
- A local authority commissioner
- Academics & researcher to ensure the validity of the work
- dialogueR
Who funded the project?
The following organisations funded the project although are not part of the steering group unless named:
- The South West sufficiency programme, comprising South Gloucestershire, Bath & North East Somerset, Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Plymouth, Somerset, Swindon, Wiltshire, Torbay
- RWK Goodman, a specialist law firm which supports children’s services and specialist schools.
- Hazlewoods, a specialist accountancy and business advisory firm. With offices across Cheltenham, Bristol, and Cardiff, its dedicated Healthcare team of over 100 experts support UK-wide providers across multiple areas of care, including children’s homes and SEND schools, in operating, growing, acquiring, and selling.
- The Caretech Charitable Foundation, an independent grant making corporate foundation aimed at meaningful change in the social care sector
- the National Association of Special Schools, and
- dialogue, an organisation delivering safeguarding and leadership training and consultancy to the sector.
