The short answer. A children's home in England must keep two sets of records. Under Regulation 36 it must keep a case record for each child containing the information listed in Schedule 3. Under Regulation 37 it must keep the home's own records listed in Schedule 4. Case records must be kept up to date and every entry must be signed and dated by its author.
Last reviewed 12 August 2026 against the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015. Applies to children's homes in England.
Record keeping is the part of running a children's home that everyone agrees is important and almost nobody enjoys. It is also the area where the requirements are most precise, and where the gap between what a home believes it does and what its records actually show tends to appear during an inspection.
This article sets out what the Regulations require, in the order a registered manager would need it. Where a requirement is easy to miss, it is flagged.
The two sets of records every home must keep
The Regulations split record keeping into records about children and records about the home. They carry different rules, different contents and different retention periods, which is why homes that treat them as one system often find gaps.
| Children's case records | The home's other records | |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation | Regulation 36 | Regulation 37 |
| Contents set by | Schedule 3 | Schedule 4 |
| Kept for | 75 years from the child's date of birth, or 15 years from date of death if the child dies before 18 | At least 15 years from the date of the last entry |
| Signing requirement | Every entry signed and dated by its author | No equivalent express requirement, but records must be kept up to date |
| Where kept | Securely in the home while the child lives there, then in a secure place | Maintained in the home |
The three rules under Regulation 36 that catch homes out
Regulation 36(1) is short, and each of its three limbs is a separate requirement. Case records must include the Schedule 3 information, must be kept up to date, and must be signed and dated by the author of each entry.
That third point is the one most often missed. It applies to every entry, not to the file as a whole. A daily log written by one member of staff and countersigned by a shift leader at the end of the week does not meet it. Neither does a shared login where entries cannot be traced to the person who made them, which is a common weakness in both paper folders and some digital systems.
The practical test is simple: pick any entry in any file at random and ask who wrote it and when. If the answer is not on the page, the record does not meet Regulation 36(1)(c).
What must be in a child's case record
Schedule 3 lists 26 items across five groupings. In summary:
Personal details
- The child's name and any previous name, other than a name used before adoption
- Date of birth and sex
- Religion, if any
- Ethnicity, and cultural and linguistic background
- The address the child lived at immediately before entering the home
- The address and type of accommodation the child is going to on leaving
- Money and valuables deposited for safekeeping, with dates in and out
- The statutory provision, if any, under which the child is accommodated
Contact details
- The placing authority, including a named individual to contact where the placing authority is not a parent
- Parents, including their religion if any
- Any social worker assigned by the placing authority
- Any school or college, including the designated member of staff where the school has one
- Any employer of the child
Care, protection and safety
- The date and circumstances of every missing episode, including any information about where the child was during the absence
- The date and circumstances of any measure of control, discipline or restraint
- Arrangements for, and any restrictions on, contact
Plans and reports
- Any EHC plan or statement of special educational needs
- Every school report received while the child is in the home
- The placing authority's care plan and the placement plan
- The date and result of any review of those plans
Health
- The child's GP and registered dental practitioner, and the address where primary medical services are provided
- Any accident or serious illness while accommodated in the home
- Immunisations, allergies, medical examinations and any medical or dental need or treatment
- Health examinations or developmental tests carried out at or through school
- Medicines kept for the child, including which the child may self-administer, administration, and disposal
- Any special dietary or health needs
Two items are worth pausing on. The missing episode requirement asks for the circumstances and any information about the child's whereabouts during the absence, not simply the times out and back. And "every school report received" is an absolute: reports that arrive by email and are never filed are a genuine gap, and an easy one to close.
What the home's own records must cover
Schedule 4 is shorter and covers seven areas.
| Record | What it must show |
|---|---|
| Register of children | For each child: date of admission, date they ceased to be accommodated, address before and after, placing authority, and the statutory provision they are accommodated under |
| Record of people working at the home | Full name, sex, date of birth, home address, qualifications and experience relevant to work with children, full or part time status with average weekly hours, and whether they live at the home |
| Duty rosters | The planned staff duty roster and a record of the rosters actually worked |
| Others residing or working at the home | Anyone who resides or works at the home at any time who is not already covered by the register of children or the staff record |
| Visitors | All visitors to the home and to children, with names and the reason for the visit |
| Fire drills and alarm tests | Every drill or test, any deficiency found in the procedure or the equipment, and the steps taken to put it right |
| Accounts | Records of all accounts kept in the home |
The rostering requirement is more demanding than it first looks, because it asks for both the planned roster and the roster as worked. A home that only keeps the published rota cannot evidence what actually happened on a given night, which matters when an incident is being reviewed months later. The fire record is similarly specific: the deficiency and the remedy are both required, not just the fact that a drill took place.
Restraint records: the 24, 48 and 5 rule
Regulation 35(3) sets the tightest timescales in the whole records regime, and they are worth knowing precisely.
| Deadline | What must happen |
|---|---|
| Within 24 hours | A record is made of the use of any measure of control, discipline or restraint, containing all eight specified details |
| Within 48 hours | The registered person, or a person they have authorised, has spoken to the member of staff who used the measure and has signed the record to confirm it is accurate |
| Within 5 days | The registered person or authorised person adds confirmation to the record that they have spoken to the child about the measure |
The eight details required within 24 hours are: the child's name; the behaviour leading to the measure; the date, time and location; a description of the measure and how long it lasted; what was done to try to avoid needing it; who used it and who else was present; how effective it was and what followed; and a description of any injury to anyone, and any medical treatment given as a result.
Two things follow from this. First, "details of any methods used or steps taken to avoid the need to use the measure" means a record that jumps straight to the hold is incomplete, however well written the rest of it is. Second, the 48 hour and 5 day steps are separate additions to the same record, so the record has to remain open and then be added to, with the additions attributable and dated.
Restraint that is planned or provided for as a matter of routine in a child's EHC plan or statement of special educational needs falls outside these requirements.
How long records must be kept
Retention is set by Regulation 36(2) for case records and Regulation 37(2)(c) for everything else.
- Case records: 75 years from the child's date of birth. If the child dies before turning 18, 15 years from the date of death.
- Schedule 4 records: at least 15 years from the date of the last entry.
Case records must be kept securely in the home while the child is living there, and in a secure place afterwards. If a home closes, the records do not simply stay with the provider: Regulation 36(4) and (5) require them to be transferred, either to another home run by the same provider, the nearest one where there is more than one, or to the relevant placing authority or local authority where the provider will not be running another home.
Seventy five years is longer than most storage arrangements are designed for, and longer than most paper survives in usable condition. It is one of the strongest practical arguments for a records system that does not depend on a physical cupboard in a specific building.
We have written about this in more detail in how long children's homes must keep records.
Records can be electronic, and the Regulations say so
Some providers still believe that inspectors expect paper, or that digital records sit in a grey area. They do not. Regulation 38 states that the listed items "may be kept in electronic form", provided they are kept in an accessible manner.
Regulation 38 lists fifteen items that must be accessible:
- The statement of purpose and the children's guide
- Placement plans for children who are not looked after
- The safeguarding policy, the anti-bullying policy and the missing child policy
- The behaviour management policy, and records of control, discipline or restraint
- Children's case records and the Schedule 4 records
- The complaints procedure and records of complaints
- The independent person's reports under Regulation 44
- Quality of care reviews under Regulation 45
- Annual reviews of the suitability of the home's location under Regulation 46
"Accessible" is doing real work in that sentence. A record that exists but takes twenty minutes and three phone calls to produce is not accessible in any useful sense, and that is usually what an inspection exposes rather than a record being missing altogether.
Who else has a right to see the records
Records in a children's home are not only for the home. Several other people have defined rights of access, and each one is a checkpoint on quality.
- The independent person under Regulation 44 may inspect the home's records as part of a monthly visit, with one carve out: a child's case records only with the consent of the child and their placing authority. Our guide to Regulation 44 visits covers this in full.
- Ofsted may request a statement summarising any complaints made in the preceding twelve months and the action taken in response, under Regulation 39(5). A home that does not log complaints consistently cannot produce this on request.
- Placing authorities may request a copy of the quality of care review report, which must in any event go to Ofsted within 28 days of the review being completed under Regulation 45(4).
- The child. Regulation 14(2)(f) requires staff to help each child to access and contribute to the records kept about them.
That last one deserves more weight than it usually gets. It changes how records should read. A daily log written on the assumption that only staff and inspectors will see it tends to be blunter and more clinical than one written in the knowledge that the young person can ask to read it, and may well do so as an adult, decades later.
Where record keeping usually falls down
In practice the problem is rarely that a home has no records. It is that the records do not hold together. The recurring patterns:
- Entries that cannot be attributed. Shared logins, initials that nobody can decode, or entries written up days later by whoever was free.
- Copy and paste daily logs. Near identical entries across several days, which tell a reader nothing about the child and undermine the credibility of the entries that do matter.
- Incidents that stop halfway. A restraint recorded within 24 hours but never signed off at 48 hours, or no note that anyone spoke to the child.
- Records that contradict the plan. A placement plan that says one thing and six weeks of logs that show another, with no review requested in between.
- Notifications not traceable to the record. An incident logged and a Regulation 40 notification submitted, with no link between them, so nobody can show what was reported or what action followed.
- Documents that arrive and never land. School reports, review outcomes and health letters sitting in an inbox rather than in the case record.
None of these are exotic failures. They are what happens when recording is spread across a paper folder, a shared drive, a rota spreadsheet and several inboxes, and no single person can see the whole picture until someone asks for it.
What good daily recording looks like
The Regulations set the minimum. The difference between a record that satisfies the requirement and one that is actually useful comes down to a few habits:
- Write it the same shift. Detail decays quickly, and a late entry is visible as a late entry.
- Separate what happened from what you thought about it. Both belong in the record. Merging them makes it impossible for anyone later to tell observation from interpretation.
- Record what you did, not only what the child did. Staff response is the part a reviewer needs and the part most often absent.
- Name the source. "Reported by the school" and "seen by me" carry different weight and should not read the same.
- Write it so the child could read it. Accurate, plain, and free of shorthand that would read as contempt in ten years.
- Close the loop. If an entry raises a concern, the record should show what happened next, even if the answer is that a decision was taken to monitor.
Where a digital system helps, and where it does not
Moving records into one system does not, by itself, make them better. Staff who write thin entries on paper will write thin entries on a screen. What a well set up system does change is the structural problems: attribution, timing, retrieval and oversight.
Entries carry the author and timestamp automatically, which addresses Regulation 36(1)(c) without anyone having to remember. Required fields can mirror the eight items in Regulation 35(3) so a restraint record cannot be saved half finished. Sign off steps at 48 hours and 5 days can prompt rather than rely on memory. And a manager can see, without asking anyone, which records are incomplete this week rather than discovering it during a Regulation 45 review.
What it does not do is replace professional judgement about what is significant enough to record, or about when an incident is serious enough to notify. Those decisions stay with the registered person.
See it applied to your own home. OVcare brings case records, Schedule 4 records, incident and restraint recording, HR and reporting into one platform, with entries attributed and timestamped and inspection evidence in one place. If you want to see how that works against the requirements in this article, book a free demo and we will walk through it with your setting in mind. You may also find our Ofsted readiness checklist useful in the meantime.
Frequently asked questions
Do records really have to be signed and dated by each author?
Yes, for case records. Regulation 36(1)(c) requires it for each entry. This is the requirement most often missed where a home uses shared accounts or writes up several days at once.
Are digital records acceptable to Ofsted?
The Regulations themselves settle this. Regulation 38 says the listed items may be kept in electronic form, as long as they are kept in an accessible manner. The question is not paper against digital, it is whether the record is complete, attributable and retrievable.
Does every missing episode go in the case record?
Yes. Paragraph 14 of Schedule 3 requires the date and circumstances of all incidents where a child goes missing from the home, including any information about the child's whereabouts during the absence. Whether an individual episode also needs a notification to Ofsted under Regulation 40 is a separate judgement.
Do the same rules apply to supported accommodation?
No. Supported accommodation providers registered with Ofsted work to a different framework, with its own record keeping and notification requirements. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 apply to children's homes. If you run both, the two sets of requirements need to be held separately rather than merged into one house standard.
What happens to records if a home closes?
Regulation 36(3) to (5) requires case records to be transferred. If the provider runs another home, records go there, or to the nearest home if there is more than one. If the provider will not be running another home, records transfer to the placing authority, or in some cases to the local authority responsible for a child's EHC plan or statement.
A note on scope. This article is general information about the requirements in England and is not legal advice. It does not replace the professional judgement of the registered person, and it should be read alongside the Regulations themselves and your own local safeguarding procedures. Requirements change, so check the primary source before relying on any point here.
Sources:
- The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 (SI 2015/541), Regulations 14, 35 to 41, 44 and 45, and Schedules 3 and 4
- Department for Education, Guide to the Children's Homes Regulations including the quality standards (April 2015)
