HearthBuild any record your home needs. Walk into inspection ready.
Daily logs, incidents, safeguarding: recorded your way, in minutes, with no template lock-in. Every entry maps to an Ofsted Quality Standard, so the evidence assembles itself while your team does the work that matters.
Free until Ofsted registers you. Going through registration? Use Hearth free until your URN comes through. After that: pay monthly, cancel anytime, every plan is the whole product.
Built by someone who did the job.
Seven years working in children’s residential care, then Hearth. The whole idea, in one minute.
Old systems make you record their way. Hearth records yours.
Most children's-home software is a decade or two old. You're locked into their templates, their contracts, and extras bolted on the side. Hearth is built the other way round.
Build anything
Create any form or log yourself, in minutes: fields, dropdowns, sign-offs, the lot. No support ticket, no waiting on a vendor, no cap on how much you can create.
One system, whole home
Records, rota, staff training matrix, compliance registers, planner and team messaging in one place. Not four subscriptions stitched together, and nothing statutory gated behind a tier.
No lock-in
Pay monthly and leave whenever you like. No two or three-year contract to get a fair price. And free, guided migration if you're moving across from another system.
Three steps. Inspection-ready as a side-effect.
Ofsted expects always-on readiness, not a four-week scramble before a visit. Hearth turns everyday recording into the evidence the SCCIF asks for.
Build it
Your registered manager builds the records the home actually uses (daily logs, key-work sessions, night checks, incident forms) and tags each to a Quality Standard.
Log it
Staff record at the point of care on any device, in under 30 seconds. Every entry is timestamped, attributed, and held in a tamper-evident audit trail.
Prove it
When the inspector asks, the evidence is already sorted, grouped by Quality Standard and ready to export. Serious events auto-draft a Regulation 40 notification.
Not just daily logs. The whole home, in one system.
Every statutory record type a registered children’s home keeps, plus the rota, the money and the reporting around it: built in from day one, included on every plan.
Reg 40 & 41 notifications
Serious events auto-draft a Regulation 40 notification for the manager to review; admissions and discharges are recorded under Regulation 41.
Reg 44 visits
A read-only login for your independent visitor, and every requirement and recommendation they raise tracked to completion with an owner and a date. The home can’t edit a finding made against it.
Annex A readiness
A coverage dashboard that pre-fills Annex A from your own records, so the numbers match your logs when the inspector asks.
Medication (MAR)
Regulation 23 records: what was given, refused, omitted or given at a different dose, plus stock counts and the gaps they reveal. Not a controlled-drug register.
Children's voice
Views, wishes and feelings captured as QS2 evidence in the child’s own words, plus a screen built for them rather than for staff. No child logins, by design.
Staff files & supervision
Schedule 2 checks, supervision and training records under Regulations 32–33, visible only to manager roles.
Complaints
Regulation 39 complaints with outcomes and learning, linked into your evidence.
Compliance register
Policies and statutory reviews (Reg 16, 17, 34, 45, 46) with review-due dates and overdue flags.
RI oversight
A multi-home dashboard for the Responsible Individual, with overdue items surfaced per home. On every plan, because every home has an RI.
Inspection mode
One screen that assembles a child’s record the way an inspector reads it: chronology, incidents, notifications, and the Quality Standard each entry evidences.
Patterns and comparison
Compare a child’s records over time, or against the rest of the home, to show what changed after you changed something. This is what turns a pile of logs into evidence of impact.
Rota, leave and cover
Shifts, annual leave and sickness in one place, with gaps in cover visible before they happen rather than after.
Children's money
Pocket money, savings and personal allowances tracked per child, with purchase requests and receipts held against each pot.
Checklists and trackers
Health appointments, LAC reviews, PEPs and statutory dates, each with an owner and a due date.
Automations
Recurring statutory tasks fire on their own schedule, so a review gets chased before it is overdue instead of found at audit.
Your own forms
Build any record your home needs with the form builder, or start from the pack of statutory forms set up for you.
Subject access requests
A child’s full record exported when it is asked for, with the redaction step built into the process rather than done by hand.
Record retention
Records are kept for the statutory period and then disposed of on schedule, and the disposal is itself evidenced.
Your branding
Your logo and name on the system and on every PDF that leaves it, so records look like yours rather than a supplier’s.
Gross pay from the rota
Hours worked convert to gross pay using your own uplift and bank-holiday rules. Manager-only, and it stops at gross: this is not an HMRC filing tool.
Registered for 16 and 17 year olds too? That is a different set of regulations.
Supported accommodation has been Ofsted-registered since October 2023, under its own regulations, its own four Quality Standards and its own inspection framework. Most systems hand you the children’s home forms and let you work it out. Hearth doesn’t. Read what that means in practice.
The right four standards
The leadership and management, protection, accommodation and support standards, in the regulations’ own words. Not the nine children’s home standards with the labels changed.
Regulation 32 reviews
The six-monthly quality of support review, with the four things regulation 32(1) says it must take into account, and the 28 day clock to get the report to Ofsted counted from the day you complete it.
Your young people’s own words
Regulation 32(1)(b) makes you ask how prepared they felt moving in and moving on. They write it themselves, on their own screen, and you can’t edit or delete it.
Notifications, correctly addressed
Fifteen duties across two Parts of the regulations, each with its own recipients. A death goes to six bodies including the Secretary of State and the integrated care board, which is not the placing authority.
Built for nearly-adults
No stars, no points, nothing congratulating a seventeen year old for doing the washing up. Independence, work, college and moving on.
One login for both
Run children’s homes and supported accommodation? Choose the setting per premises. One account, one bill, and each service sees only the regulations that apply to it.
Switching from a 20-year-old system?
What changes when you move to Hearth.
| Typical incumbent | Hearth | |
|---|---|---|
| Build your own records | Limited; vendor builds templates | Unlimited, self-serve, in minutes |
| Staff training & compliance | A separate system, or a spreadsheet | Built in: matrix, renewals, certificates |
| Contract | Cheaper price needs 2–3 years | Monthly, cancel anytime |
| Moving your data in | Your problem | Free, guided migration |
| Evidence for inspection | Export, then assemble | Assembled by Quality Standard as you go |
Honest pricing. Per home for a children’s home, per place for supported accommodation.
Excluding VAT. Every plan is the whole product. No contract required. Set up yourself for free, or have us do it with you.
- The complete product: see below
- Free guided migration
- UK-based support
- Cancel any month
- The complete product: see below
- Free guided migration
- UK-based support
- Cancel any month
- The complete product: see below
- Free guided migration
- UK-based support
- Cancel any month
Running several homes? Group pricing available. Larger or specialist settings (secure, SEN, family assessment) get a tailored quote. Prefer it done for you? The Inspection-Ready Setup migrates your records and organises your evidence in 30 days.
Every record lands against a Quality Standard.
The 9 standards from the Children's Homes Regulations 2015. Tag a form once, and every entry made on it becomes evidence under that standard, automatically.
The things managers ask first.
Is it built for Ofsted, not CQC?
Yes. Hearth is built specifically for children's residential homes in England, around the Children's Homes Regulations 2015 and the Social Care Common Inspection Framework, not adapted from adult-care software.
Can I move off my current system?
Yes. We migrate your historical records across for you, free, as part of onboarding. Migrated records keep their original dates and authorship and are marked as imported, so your audit trail stays honest in front of an inspector, and nothing looks like it was written the week you switched.
Is my data safe?
Records are hosted in London, encrypted in transit and at rest, and held with a full audit trail of who recorded and viewed what. Children’s records are never deleted, only archived, in line with statutory retention. The full picture, including what we haven’t done yet, is on our security page.
How is access controlled?
Every account, including the manager's, signs in with a password plus a six-digit authenticator code. Access is role-based (carer, manager, RI, and a read-only login for your Reg 44 visitor), staff files are manager-only, and when someone leaves, their access can be cut off immediately.
What if we leave, or you disappear?
Your records are yours. You can export everything at any time, including PDF evidence packs, and if you leave you get a full export plus help moving out. If Hearth ever ceased trading, the same applies. Children's records are preserved to statutory retention and are never held hostage. And reading or exporting your records is never blocked, even over a billing issue.
Do staff need to be techy?
No. Recording is designed for staff of any digital confidence: a few taps on a phone at the point of care. If you can use a messaging app, you can use Hearth.
Is there really no contract?
Correct. Pay monthly and leave whenever you like. An annual plan is there if you'd like a discount, but it's never required to get a fair price.
See your home's records, sorted.
A 20-minute demo with your actual forms in mind. No obligation, no contract, no pressure.