Children and families services: For children and young people

Types of children and families services Ofsted inspects

You can search by these different types of children and families services:

  • Adoption support agencies
    Adoption support agencies help adoption agencies in preparing and training adoptive parents. They also assist adoptees who have reached the age of 18 and would like to contact their original parents.
  • Boarding school
    This is a school where pupils study and live during term time. Independent boarding schools charge fees for tuition, board and lodging. In maintained schools you don't pay for tuition, only for board and lodging.
  • Cafcass
    The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) provides advice to the family courts and provides support and advice to children and families involved in family court proceedings.
  • Children's centres
    At a Sure Start Children's Centre there are a range of services for children and their families from pregnancy right through to when a child goes into reception class at primary school.
  • Children's home
    Children's homes provide care and accommodation mainly for children and young people under the age of 18 where they are not able to continue living with one or more parents and the local authority agrees this is the best thing for the child.
  • Further education college with residential care
    This is a further education college that also provides residential care for young people under 18 years of age.
  • Fostering services
    Fostering services find and recruit adults who want to become foster carers and then support them to look after children. Fostering services can be provided by an independent fostering agency or by the local authority.
  • Local authority
  • Local authority adoption agency
    Local authority adoption agencies decide whether being adopted is the best thing for a child, finds the right family for them and makes all the necessary arrangements.
  • Local authority private fostering
    Privately fostered children can be up to 15 years old; they are placed with an appropriate adult for 28 days or more but are not looked after by the local authority. Parents and carers must tell the local authority when this happens so that the local authority can check the child is safe and support the private foster carer to meet the child’s needs.
  • Residential family centre
    Residential family centres give somewhere to stay for a short time to children with their parents. During the stay the centre assesses the parents' ability to look after their children's needs.
  • Residential special school
    This is a school for students with special educational needs where they can also live.
  • Secure training centres
    A secure training centre provides education, training and physical education for young people aged 10 to 17 who have been in trouble with the police and who have to stay in a secure place whilst they wait for their punishment to be decided or who are serving their punishment.
  • Voluntary adoption agency
    A voluntary adoption agency is a not-for-profit organisation that finds families for children who need to be placed for adoption.

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