HearthRegulation 45: the quality of care review, and the report it produces
Every six months a children's home has to review the quality of care it provides and write it down. Done as a form-filling exercise it tells an inspector nothing. Done properly it is the document that shows a home knows itself, which is most of what the leadership and management judgement is asking.
By Mason Hughes, 7 years in children's residential care · Updated
What the regulation actually requires
Regulation 45 of the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015 requires the registered person to review the quality of care provided for children at least once every six months, and to produce a written report of that review. The regulation is on legislation.gov.uk.
Two things make it more than an internal exercise. The review must be informed by the views of children, their parents or carers, placing authorities and staff, so it cannot be written alone at a desk. And the report has to reach Ofsted, which means it is read by the regulator as a statement of how well the home understands itself.
Who has to be consulted
This is the part most often skipped, and the easiest for an inspector to test by asking a child whether anybody asked them. A review that reports children’s views without any record of having gathered them is worse than one that admits the response rate was poor.
- Children living in the home. Directly, in a way that suits them, and recorded.
- Parents and carers, where it is appropriate to involve them.
- Placing authorities, who see the home from the outside and across placements.
- Staff, including those who are not managers and will say different things.
- The independent person whose Regulation 44 reports cover the same period.
What the report should cover
The point of the report is not to describe the home. It is to evidence a judgement about whether the care is good enough, and to show what the home is doing about the parts that are not.
- What the home set out to do, measured against its own Statement of Purpose rather than a generic standard.
- What actually happened over the six months: admissions and endings, incidents, missing episodes, restraint, complaints, safeguarding referrals, staffing and turnover.
- What children said, in their own terms, including the uncomfortable parts.
- What the Regulation 44 visits raised, and what was done about each recommendation.
- Where practice fell short, named plainly, with the action, the owner and the date.
- What changed as a result of the last review, which is the question that separates a live document from an annual ritual.
How Reg 44 and Reg 45 fit together
Regulation 44 is the monthly view from outside the home. Regulation 45 is the home’s own six-monthly view of itself. Inspectors read them as a pair, and the question they are really asking is whether the two documents are in the same universe.
When the independent person has raised the same recording gap four months running and the Reg 45 review describes recording as a strength, that mismatch is the finding. It says more about leadership oversight than either document does alone. Conversely, a review that opens by naming the thing the visitor keeps flagging, and sets out what has been done about it, answers the question before it is asked. There is more on the monthly side in the Regulation 44 guide.
Three failure modes
- The review is written by one person in an afternoon. It reads like it, and the consultation requirement is visibly unmet. Fix: gather children’s and staff views continuously through the six months rather than reconstructing them at the end.
- It describes activity instead of judging quality. Counting key-work sessions is not the same as saying whether they are any good. Fix: for every number, answer the question “and what does that tell us about the care?”
- Nothing from the previous review is revisited. Fix: open the report with the actions from last time and their outcomes, before anything new.
Common questions
How often is a Regulation 45 review required?
At least once every six months. That is a minimum rather than a target: a home going through significant change, a difficult inspection outcome or a period of high staff turnover has good reason to review more often, and being able to show you chose to is itself evidence of oversight.
Who has to be consulted for a Regulation 45 review?
Children living in the home, their parents or carers where appropriate, the authorities placing them, and staff. The consultation has to be real and recorded. An inspector can and does test it simply by asking a child whether anyone asked them what they thought of living there.
What is the difference between Regulation 44 and Regulation 45?
Regulation 44 is a monthly visit by an independent person from outside the home, who writes a report on whether children are safeguarded and their wellbeing promoted. Regulation 45 is the home's own review of the quality of its care, at least every six months. One is external and frequent, the other internal and periodic.
Does the Regulation 45 report go to Ofsted?
Yes. The written report of the quality of care review is provided to Ofsted, which is why it is worth treating as a document the regulator will read closely rather than an internal file note. It is one of the clearest signals available about how well a home understands its own practice.
What happens if a home misses a Regulation 45 review?
It is a breach of the regulation, and it cannot be backfilled convincingly after the fact: a review dated retrospectively, with no trace of the consultation that should have informed it, tends to make matters worse. If a deadline has slipped, the honest course is to complete it late, date it accurately, and record why.
Is there a required template for a Regulation 45 report?
No. The regulation sets out what the review must cover and who must be consulted, not a format. Templates sold by consultancies can be useful scaffolding, but a home that fills one in without doing the underlying consultation has bought a document rather than a review.
Make readiness a side-effect of recording.
Hearth links every daily log, incident and key-work note to a Quality Standard, so your evidence assembles itself as your team works. Built only for children’s homes in England.
Book a demoKeep reading
Hearth is an independent software provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Ofsted. This guide is general information about the regulatory framework, not regulatory or legal advice. Always check the current Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015, the Guide to the Children’s Homes Regulations and the SCCIF on GOV.UK for the authoritative detail.