The short answer. A keyworker session is a planned one to one between a child and their named worker. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 do not use the term, and set no required frequency. What they do require is that the home ascertains and acts on each child's views, follows their relevant plans, and can evidence both. Keyworking is how most homes do that.
Last reviewed 12 August 2026 against the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015. Applies to children's homes in England.
Ask ten registered managers what a keyworker session should cover and you will get ten answers, because there is no statutory template. That gap is why keyworking is often the weakest evidence trail in an otherwise well run home: sessions happen, they help, and then they are written up in a way that shows almost nothing about whether the child's plan is being followed or their views are being acted on.
This article sets out what keyworking is being used to deliver, what a session should cover, and what the record needs to contain to be worth anything six months later.
What a keyworker session is, and what it is not
A keyworker session is a planned, protected conversation between a child and the member of staff who holds particular responsibility for them. It exists to build a relationship over time, to give the child a regular route to say what they think, and to work on the things their plans identify.
Three things it is not, and confusing them is where the record loses value:
- Not a debrief. A conversation after an incident is important, and required practice under Regulation 35(3) in the case of restraint, but it is a different conversation with a different purpose.
- Not a plan review. The placing authority reviews the care plan. A keyworker session feeds that review, and under Regulation 14(2)(e) may be the reason a review is requested, but it does not replace it.
- Not staff supervision. Regulation 33(4)(b) requires practice related supervision for employees. That is about the worker. Keyworking is about the child.
Which regulations keyworking actually evidences
Because keyworking is not a named duty, it is easy to treat it as optional good practice. It is more useful to see it as the delivery mechanism for duties that are named. The table below maps the main ones.
| Regulation | What it requires | What a session can evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Reg 7(2)(a)(i) to (iii) | Ascertain and consider each child's views, wishes and feelings, help them express them, and help them understand how those views were taken into account | The child's own words, and a record of what changed as a result and what the child was told |
| Reg 7(2)(a)(vi) | Help each child prepare for reviews of their relevant plans and make their views known | A session held before the review, with the child's points recorded and carried in |
| Reg 14(2)(c) | Each child's relevant plans are followed | Session work tied to specific objectives in the placement or care plan |
| Reg 6(2)(b)(vi) | Help each child develop resilience and skills to return home, move on, or live independently | Independence and preparation work, tracked over time rather than in one entry |
| Reg 11(2)(a)(vii) | Help each child recognise or withdraw from a damaging, exploitative or harmful relationship | Direct work following a missing episode or a concern about associations |
| Reg 12(2)(a)(ii) | Help each child understand how to keep safe | Safety work that responds to what has actually happened, not a generic topic list |
| Reg 8(2)(a)(i) and (iv) | Help each child meet education targets and understand the value of education | Conversations about attendance, barriers and next steps |
| Reg 10(2)(a)(ii) | Help each child understand their health needs and the options open to them | Health conversations recorded in the child's terms |
| Reg 13(2)(f) | The registered person understands the impact of care on each child's progress | Patterns across sessions, feeding the Regulation 45 review |
Read that table the other way round and it becomes a session agenda. The duties tell you what the conversation is for.
How often should keyworker sessions happen?
There is no frequency set in the Regulations. Weekly is common, fortnightly is defensible, and monthly is hard to justify for a child with an active plan. What matters is that the frequency you choose is the frequency you actually deliver, and that it is written down.
Paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 requires the statement of purpose to describe the home's policy and approach to consulting children about the quality of their care. If keyworking is your main consultation route, it belongs there, and the standard you set in that document is the standard you will be measured against. A home that states weekly sessions and delivers fortnightly has created its own shortfall.
The more useful question than frequency is whether sessions are happening for the children who most need them. Gaps cluster: the child who declines, the child whose keyworker has left, the child whose behaviour makes sessions hard to hold. Those are precisely the children an inspector will case track.
What if the child refuses?
Record the offer, the child's response, and what was tried instead. A declined session that is documented shows a home that keeps offering. A blank space shows nothing at all, and it is impossible to tell the two apart after the event. Regulation 7 asks you to help each child express their views, and a child who consistently declines formal sessions may need a different route rather than fewer attempts.
What a good session covers
Sessions work better with a loose structure than a fixed script. A reasonable spine:
- How things are. Open, unstructured, and recorded in the child's own words rather than paraphrased into staff language.
- Anything since last time. Incidents, missing episodes, contact, changes at school. This is where the session connects to the rest of the record.
- The plan. One or two objectives from the placement or care plan, worked on rather than mentioned.
- Safety. Responsive to real events and real associations, not a generic topic.
- What the child wants to change. Including about the home itself, which is the consultation duty in practice.
- What happens next. Actions, who owns them, and by when.
The last point does most of the work. A session that generates no action generates no evidence.
What the record needs to contain
Keyworker session notes sit within the child's case record, so Regulation 36 applies: the record must be kept up to date and every entry must be signed and dated by its author. Beyond that minimum, a session record earns its place if it contains:
- The child's words, marked as theirs. Quoted where it matters. A summary in staff voice loses the thing that makes the record valuable.
- What the worker said and did. Not only what the child raised.
- The link back. Which incident, missing episode or previous session this follows from.
- The link forward. Actions with named owners and dates, and a review date.
- What the child was told. Specifically, how their views from last time were used, which is the Regulation 7(2)(a)(iii) duty and the one most often invisible in records.
- Attachments where they exist. A school report, a safety plan, a piece of work the child did in the session.
Write it on the assumption the child will read it, because Regulation 14(2)(f) requires staff to help each child access and contribute to the records kept about them, and many care leavers do exactly that years later.
Linking sessions to incidents and missing episodes
Schedule 3 requires the case record to hold the date and circumstances of every missing episode, including information about where the child was during the absence, along with any measure of control, discipline or restraint, and contact arrangements. Those entries describe what happened. Keyworker sessions are where the home shows what it did about it.
When the two sit in separate systems, that connection has to be reconstructed by hand, usually under pressure. When they are linked, a manager can answer the question inspectors actually ask: this child went missing four times in six weeks, what did you do, and did it work?
The same applies to the independent person's monthly visit under Regulation 44, which considers whether children are effectively safeguarded and whether the home promotes their wellbeing. Session records that show follow through are among the more persuasive evidence available. Our guide to Regulation 44 visits covers what those visits examine.
Where keyworking records commonly fall down
- Sessions recorded as having happened, with no content. "Keyworker session completed" evidences a tick box, not a conversation.
- The worker's voice throughout. Records that describe what staff think the child feels, with nothing the child actually said.
- No thread. Each session written as if it were the first, so progress over months is invisible.
- Actions with no owner. "To be followed up" that nobody follows up.
- No link to the plan. Sessions that are pleasant and useful but cannot be tied to a single objective in the child's relevant plans.
- Gaps that nobody spotted. Six weeks without a session for one child, noticed only during a Regulation 45 review.
- The consultation loop left open. The child says something should change, something does change, and nobody tells the child.
Turning sessions into oversight
Individually, session records support one child. Collectively they answer the question Regulation 13(2)(f) puts on the registered person: understanding the impact the quality of care is having on each child's progress and experiences, and using that to improve.
That means being able to see, across the home: who has not had a session recently, which actions are overdue, which themes are recurring across several children, and what children have said about the home itself. Those four views turn a pile of individual notes into the evidence base for the six monthly quality of care review under Regulation 45. Our Regulation 45 review pack sets out what that review needs to gather.
Where a system helps, and where it does not
Moving keyworking onto a platform does not improve the conversation. A thin session is thin wherever it is typed. What it changes is everything around the conversation.
Entries carry their author and timestamp automatically, which meets Regulation 36(1)(c) without anyone remembering. A session can be linked to the incident or missing episode it responds to, so the thread survives staff turnover. Goals carry review dates, and reminders surface them rather than relying on a keyworker's memory across a rota. Documents attach to the session rather than sitting in an inbox. And a manager can see the gaps this week, not at the end of the review period.
What a system cannot do is decide what is significant, judge when a child's disclosure needs escalating, or hold the relationship. Those stay with the people doing the work.
See it with your own home in mind. OVcare records keyworker sessions alongside care records, incidents, goals and reporting in one platform, with sessions linked to incidents, review dates tracked and attributed entries throughout. Book a free demo and we will walk through it against the points in this article. The Ofsted readiness checklist is free to download in the meantime.
Frequently asked questions
Are keyworker sessions a legal requirement in children's homes?
Not by that name. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 do not use the term keyworker or require sessions at a set frequency. They do require the home to ascertain and act on each child's views under Regulation 7, follow the child's relevant plans under Regulation 14, and evidence both. Keyworking is the usual way homes meet those duties.
How often should keyworker sessions take place?
There is no statutory frequency. Weekly or fortnightly is typical. Whatever you choose should be stated in your policy and reflected in your statement of purpose, since Schedule 1 requires it to describe how the home consults children about the quality of their care, and you will be measured against your own stated standard.
What should be recorded after a keyworker session?
The child's views in their own words, what the worker said and did, the link to any incident or previous session, actions with named owners and dates, and confirmation of what the child was told about how their earlier views were used. The entry must be signed and dated by its author under Regulation 36(1)(c).
Who should be a child's keyworker?
The Regulations do not specify. In practice it should be someone with enough regular contact to build a relationship and enough continuity to sustain it, which makes rota patterns a real constraint. Where a keyworker leaves, the handover of the thread matters as much as the reallocation itself.
Does this apply to supported accommodation?
No. Supported accommodation providers registered with Ofsted work to a separate framework with its own requirements. Key working still happens, and good practice carries across, but the regulations cited here apply to children's homes in England.
A note on scope. This article is general information about the position in England and is not legal advice. It does not replace the professional judgement of the registered person, and should be read alongside the Regulations and your own local safeguarding procedures.
Sources: The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/541), Regulations 6 to 14, 33, 35, 36, 44 and 45, and Schedules 1 and 3. Department for Education, Guide to the Children's Homes Regulations including the quality standards (April 2015).
