Supporting Care Pathways
Strategic partnerships that help children access stable, loving care arrangements, the foundation on which everything else is built.
Local Authority Partnerships
Supporting Local Authorities to consider how a boarding or independent day school place can reduce risks facing care-experienced children
Since 2020 the Department for Education has contracted RNCSF to provide a national service to all Local Authorities to encourage consideration of use of a boarding or independent day school places as part of the package of care and education options available for care-experienced children. This includes children who might be in children’s residential or foster care arrangements, those for whom a kinship/ guardianship arrangement might be available, or who are registered Young Carers or have Child in Need or Child Protection Plans – where a boarding placement in particular can reduce risk of a family breakdown.
Often a school placement in a boarding setting can provide a much better value for money, and better outcomes, pathway, for care-experienced children than alternatives. There are now more than 200 care-experienced children in boarding and independent schools who have been supported in this way. Their outcomes in terms of both relationships, care stability, school attendance and attainment are strong. The stability metrics (fewer than 5% have had a care or school placement breakdown) far exceed those of national benchmarks. Read more about this evidence here.
If you are a local authority wanting to learn more about how a boarding or independent day school place might be secured for a care-experienced young person, person, please make an enquiry by clicking the link below.
Read our e-booklet, where you’ll find more information about the programme including our referral process map and how school placements can be funded.
Our work in action
““RNCSF’s commissioned school place brokerage service can promote stability for children in and on the edge of care and provide excellent outcomes whilst being good value for money. Using this service we have been able to keep a child in kinship care whilst protecting the family dynamics and, all being well, leading to excellent educational outcomes.””
Frequently Asked Questions for Local Authorities
If you have a question please feel free to email us.
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School places can – at times - be funded entirely by school bursary funding, but this cannot be guaranteed. We also broker co-funding models as part of commissioned arrangements between local authorities and schools using our knowledge of practice across the authorities in England and Wales.
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If you work within children's services and would like to talk to us about a young person or our work, you can make an enquiry by clicking the link here.
Please note that the vast majority of successful BEP scheme placements are secured for children at the natural school transition points of Year 7 or 12, but there is possibility of placements to commence in Years 5, 6, 8, 9 & 10.
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For our bursary programme, the ordinary lead-in time is approximately 12 months.
All applications must be completed by June of the year before transition (e.g. completed by June 2025 for a September 2026 start). However, we can sometimes place children outside of this timeframe. Please contact our CEVC team who are on hand to advise about any child who you would like to access our support.
Throughout the process of application through to confirmation, the BEP scheme can never guarantee that a boarding/independent day school placement will be secured. It is critical to maintain parallel state school admission applications until a school offer letter has been secured.
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For those children who the Local Authority is not the corporate parent - for example those in kinship care, SGO arrangements or young carers, our financial assessments consider household income and assets, including property value.
We understand that kinship carers may have limited disposable income despite owning property, and we aim to assess financial need with sensitivity to individual circumstances.