The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026

A practical guide for Lead Members for Children's Services on the most significant piece of children's legislation in a generation — and what it means for your council.

The headline

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. It is the biggest reset of children's social care, safeguarding and schools law in England since the Children Act 2004.

For Lead Members, three things matter:

Most provisions are not yet in force. Royal Assent is the legal birth of the Act. Commencement is a separate process, and many of the headline duties depend on regulations and statutory guidance that have not yet been written.
Some duties bite quickly. A handful of provisions come into force on the day the Act passes or two months later. Others — including multi-agency child protection teams — are timetabled for 2027.
The implementation cost will land on local authorities. Almost every operational duty in the Act sits with the council, the safeguarding partners or the Director of Children's Services.

If you are the Lead Member, your job over the next 18 months is to scrutinise readiness, challenge timelines, and make sure the resourcing conversation is happening now — not when the commencement orders land.

A 30-second summary

The Act does five big things:

Reforms child protection (multi-agency teams, information sharing, a single child identifier).
Reforms children's social care (kinship offer, care leavers, agency worker rules, profit caps on placements, regional care co-operatives).
Reforms home education and school attendance (Children Not in School registers, tighter rules on out-of-school education).
Reforms schools (academies on the national curriculum, teacher pay and conditions, uniform cost cap, breakfast clubs, multi-academy trust inspections, new admissions framework).
Introduces online safety and digital wellbeing measures (statutory mobile phone guidance, powers on under-16 social media access, curriculum changes from September 2027).

The rest of this article walks through each in turn, with the local authority obligation called out at the end of every section.

Part 1 — Child protection and safeguarding

Multi-agency child protection teams (MACPTs)

This is the biggest structural change for safeguarding. The Act amends the Children Act 2004 to require the three statutory safeguarding partners — the local authority, the NHS Integrated Care Board and the police — to establish at least one Multi-Agency Child Protection Team in every local authority area.

Each MACPT must have, as a minimum:

A social worker (nominated by the council)
A person with education experience (nominated by the council)
A police officer (nominated by the constabulary)
A health professional (nominated by the ICB)

The team's job is to support the local authority in discharging its section 47 duties under the Children Act 1989 — investigating where a child is at risk of significant harm. In practice, the policy intent is for MACPTs to lead section 47 enquiries, chair strategy meetings and child protection conferences, and oversee child protection plans.

What this means for your council: The local authority remains legally responsible for the child protection function — but the operational delivery model is being rewritten around a co-located, multi-agency team. You will need a memorandum of understanding with the ICB and police on staffing, governance and information sharing. Expect 2027 commencement, but the design work needs to start in 2026.

A single child identifier

The Act creates the legal framework for a consistent child identifier (often called a Single Unique Identifier, or SUI) — the long-asked-for "one number per child" that follows them across health, education and social care. The DfE intends to pilot the NHS number as the identifier.

Designated bodies will be required to include this identifier when processing information about a child for safeguarding purposes.

What this means for your council: Children's services data systems — case management, EHCP systems, school census interfaces, attendance, early help — will need to be able to capture, store and exchange the identifier. Start asking your IT and digital teams now about the cost and timeline of compliance.

A new statutory duty to share information

The Act places a clear statutory duty on safeguarding bodies (councils, ICBs, police, probation, youth offending teams, and designated education and childcare agencies) to share information where it would help another body safeguard or promote the welfare of a child — unless sharing would be detrimental to the child.

This is intended to end the long-running cultural problem of agencies citing data protection as a reason not to share. The Act explicitly says the duty must be considered alongside data protection law, not overridden by it.

What this means for your council: Refresh information-sharing protocols. Brief frontline staff. The legal basis is now stronger — but the professional judgement still has to be made.

Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) — a new duty

When a council is considering a court application for a care or supervision order, it must now offer a family group decision-making meeting to the child's parents (or anyone with parental responsibility), and must hold one if the offer is accepted.

The duty does not apply if the council determines it would not be in the child's best interests.

What this means for your council: This is a "near-front-door" duty. It needs trained facilitators, a clear referral pathway from social work teams considering proceedings, and capacity to convene meetings at short notice. This is one of the duties that comes into force relatively quickly — within months of Royal Assent — so it is the one to brief your DCS on first.

Wider safeguarding changes

The offence of ill-treatment or wilful neglect by a care worker now extends to 16 and 17-year-olds in regulated establishments — closing a long-standing gap in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.
A new statutory framework for deprivation of liberty placements for children, beyond secure children's homes. This is intended to bring the cohort of children currently held in unregistered placements (669 children at £10,500/week as of September 2025, according to the Children's Commissioner) into a proper legal framework.

Part 2 — Children's social care

Kinship care: a statutory local offer

Councils must publish a kinship local offer — information about how they support kinship carers and children in kinship care, including what financial support is available locally. Councils must also take reasonably practicable steps to make sure carers and children actually receive it.

This bolsters existing DfE statutory guidance into a legal duty.

What this means for your council: If you do not already publish a kinship offer, you will need to. If you do, audit it against the new requirements — and plan for the demand that publication will generate.

Care leavers: "Staying Close" support

The Act requires councils to consider whether care leavers up to the age of 25 should receive "Staying Close" support — practical help with accommodation, health and wellbeing, relationships, education, training, employment and participation. Where their welfare requires it, councils must provide that support.

Councils must also publish their arrangements for supporting care leavers in the transition to adulthood.

What this means for your council: Expect a meaningful uplift in care leaver service demand. This is a duty that scrutiny committees and corporate parenting boards should be tracking from day one.

Sibling relationships

A clearer duty on local authorities to promote and maintain meaningful relationships between siblings, whether they live together or apart. The Children's Commissioner has highlighted that 32% of children with a sibling are separated from them when in care — this provision is intended to push that figure down.

Agency social workers

The Act gives ministers the power to make regulations on the use of agency workers in children's services — replacing the current statutory guidance regime introduced in 2024. The new regime will be enforceable, will cover staff beyond social workers, and will be able to set requirements on how locums are managed and supplied.

What this means for your council: If you are already heavily reliant on agency staff in children's services, the cost and supply implications could be significant. Workforce planning needs to factor this in now.

Profit caps on placement providers

Ministers can make regulations to cap the profits of non-local-authority registered children's social care providers. The government has said it will only use this power if other measures fail to reduce profiteering — but the legal lever is now in place. The Secretary of State also gains a power to commission independent business reviews of providers and warn councils where a provider may fail.

Regional Care Co-operatives

A new section 22J of the Children Act 1989 allows the Secretary of State to direct councils to establish regional co-operation arrangements for the strategic accommodation of looked-after children. The intent is to reduce the number of councils competing for placements (currently 150+) and use collective purchasing power to drive down costs and improve quality.

What this means for your council: Regional working may become mandatory. If your council is not already part of a regional pathfinder, find out which regional grouping you are likely to fall into and start the conversations.

Part 3 — Home education and school attendance

This is the most politically charged section of the Act, and the one Lead Members should expect to receive constituent correspondence on.

Children Not in School registers

Every local authority will be required to maintain a register of all children not in school — primarily home-educated children, but also children educated in unregistered settings or otherwise out of school.

Parents will be required to provide information including how much time each parent spends educating the child. Out-of-school education providers will also be required to provide details, with fines for non-compliance.

School Attendance Orders on new grounds

Councils gain powers to serve a notice and, if necessary, a School Attendance Order to send a child back to school where:

The child is subject to a Child Protection Plan, or
The child is being assessed under section 47 of the Children Act 1989, and
The council believes school attendance is in the child's best interests.

Councils may also request home visits in connection with these powers.

What this means for your council: Your home education team will need new processes, data systems and trained staff to maintain the register, handle parental information returns, and operate the new SAO pathway. The CNIS provisions are widely expected to be in force from 2027 at the earliest, after regulations and guidance are finalised — but the operational planning starts now. Expect this to be a hot topic in scrutiny.

Illegal schools

Ofsted gets stronger powers to investigate suspected unregistered schools, with clearer routes to gather evidence and act where settings operate as schools without registration. This closes a long-standing loophole exploited by some unregulated religious settings.

Part 4 — Schools

Academies brought back into the national framework

This is a structural change to the schools landscape:

Academies will be legally required to follow the national curriculum (commencing after the curriculum review concludes).
Academies will be required to follow national pay and conditions for teachers.
Multi-academy trusts will face dedicated Ofsted inspections for the first time.
Academy orders for "inadequate" maintained schools become discretionary rather than automatic — schools deemed to have capacity to improve can be supported through new regional improvement teams instead.

A new admissions framework

A new framework gives the Schools Adjudicator powers to intervene where local agreement on admissions breaks down, with parental preference and school quality as the guiding principles. Lead Members should expect implications for their council's admissions function — particularly in two-tier areas or where academies dominate.

Cost-of-living measures

These are the provisions most parents will notice:

Free breakfast clubs in all state primaries — over 2,000 expected to be open by September 2026.
Free school meals extended — around half a million more children eligible.
Branded uniform items capped at three (excluding ties), from September 2026.

What this means for your council: Direct delivery sits with schools, but councils have a role in monitoring, supporting smaller maintained schools to comply, and answering parental queries.

Mobile phones

The Act puts the existing DfE guidance on mobile phones in schools onto a statutory footing. All schools will be required to follow it.

Part 5 — Online safety and digital wellbeing

The Act gives ministers the power to act on the findings of the ongoing Children's Digital Wellbeing consultation, including measures around children's access to harmful internet services.

A particular flashpoint during the bill's passage was the question of restricting under-16 access to social media. The final position commits ministers to implementing restrictions following the consultation, with provisions for a review of OFCOM's enforcement powers within six months of Royal Assent.

From September 2027, the national curriculum must include age-appropriate material explaining why children under certain ages are restricted from accessing certain online services — covering both wellbeing implications and the business models behind online data collection.

What this means for your council: Less direct LA delivery here, but the implications for school safeguarding leads, designated safeguarding leads (DSLs) and youth services are significant. PSHE and RSHE leads will need to be briefed.

Part 6 — When does it all happen?

The Act uses a tiered commencement approach. Broadly:

On Royal Assent (29 April 2026): powers to make regulations and orders.
Two months after Royal Assent (late June 2026): the kinship local offer duty, extension of the wilful neglect offence to 16- and 17-year-olds, and a small number of other provisions.
Through 2026 and into 2027: family group decision making duty, information sharing duty, and a phased rollout of social care reforms.
2027: multi-agency child protection teams, the Children Not in School register (in full), the consistent child identifier (after pilots).
September 2027: curriculum changes on digital wellbeing.

Crucially, much of the Act is "skeleton legislation". It sets out the framework, but the detail — minimum qualifications for MACPT members, the form of the CNIS register, the rules on agency workers, the cohort of children eligible for new deprivation of liberty placements — will sit in regulations and statutory guidance still to come. Watch the consultation pipeline closely.

What Lead Members should be doing now

A practical checklist for the next 90 days:

Get a written briefing from your DCS on each of the major duties, with a RAG-rated readiness assessment and a commencement timeline.
Confirm safeguarding partner alignment. Are your council, ICB and police forces talking — at officer and at member/board level — about MACPT design? If not, convene them.
Audit your kinship offer. It is one of the first duties to bite. If it is not publication-ready, it needs to be.
Brief your scrutiny committee on the Act's headline implications. This will be a multi-year programme of change and scrutiny needs to be on the front foot.
Engage with the LGA and your regional Lead Member network. Sector-led improvement and shared learning will be essential — particularly on MACPTs, regional care co-operatives and the CNIS register.
Open the resourcing conversation with your council leadership and S.151 officer now. The funding settlement will not match the scale of new duties without active lobbying. The CCN, ADCS and LGA are all building the evidence base — your local case adds to it.
Watch for consultations. Each set of regulations will be consulted on. Lead Members should be visible in those responses, and so should DCSs.

A final thought

This Act is the most ambitious piece of children's legislation in a generation. It is also a framework, not a finished product. The shape of children's services in your area in 2028 will depend on the regulations written in 2026 and 2027, the implementation choices made by your safeguarding partners, and the scrutiny applied by Lead Members and corporate parents.

The political weather around children's services has rarely been more challenging — rising SEND demand, a placements market in crisis, attendance still recovering, and tight council finances. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act will not, on its own, solve any of those problems. But it gives Lead Members a stronger statutory footing to demand the joined-up, child-centred system that the children we serve have repeatedly told us they want.

The real work, as the Children's Commissioner put it, now begins.

For corrections, queries or to share how your council is preparing, please get in touch via the comments below.