Of all the reforms in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, the extension of Staying Close support may prove the most quietly consequential. Every local authority in England will now be required to provide practical and relational support to young people leaving residential care up to the age of 25.
The case for it has been made for years by care leavers themselves. The average young person in Britain leaves home in their mid-twenties, usually gradually, with a bedroom to return to when things go wrong. Care leavers have routinely been expected to manage a permanent, unsupported exit years earlier, from precisely the starting point of having fewer resources, thinner networks, and more to recover from. The consequences show up reliably in homelessness, unemployment and mental health statistics.
Staying Close, piloted since 2017, offers a different model for those leaving children's homes: move-on accommodation near the home, and a continuing relationship with trusted adults from it. The national mandate turns a promising pilot into an entitlement.
For residential providers, this is not someone else's reform. It reframes what a children's home is for. If the relationships a young person builds in a home are expected to persist and support them into their mid-twenties, then those relationships are the product, and the home's work does not end at the leaving date. That has practical implications providers should be planning for now: how former residents keep in touch and with whom; how staff time for ongoing contact is recognised rather than squeezed in as goodwill; how a home contributes to the local authority's Staying Close offer in its area; and how success is measured at 21 and 25, not just at discharge.
It also poses a commissioning design question that is not yet answered: local authorities hold the new duty, but the relationships live with providers. What does a good contractual bridge between the two look like? The pilots offer models; the mandate now requires every area to choose one.
The transition from care is where the system has historically undone its own best work. This Act is an opportunity to stop doing that. The question for providers: what, concretely, will your organisation's contribution to Staying Close be? And could you describe it to a commissioner today?
