How children’s homes in Wales are regulated and inspected: a guide to CIW and ratings

Children’s homes in Wales are regulated by Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), which registers and inspects them, while the people who work in them are registered with Social Care Wales. Since 1 April 2025, CIW has also published ratings for care homes, including children’s homes, across four themes. Here’s how the system works and how to make sense of it.

I’m Rhys Herbert, Managing Director of Silver Lining Care. Regulation is something every placing social worker, commissioner and family should be able to understand, so this is a plain-English guide to who does what.

Who regulates children’s homes in Wales?

Two bodies share the job, under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, often shortened to RISCA:

• Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) regulates the service. It decides whether a provider can run a children’s home, inspects homes, and can take action where standards fall short.
• Social Care Wales regulates the workforce. Residential child care workers and managers must register with it, meet its qualification requirements and keep up their professional development.

Both sit within the wider framework of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, which puts people’s well-being, voice and control at the centre of social care in Wales.

Who is responsible for a children’s home?

Under RISCA, each registered service has clearly named people accountable for it:

• The service provider: the organisation registered with CIW to run the home.
• The Responsible Individual: a senior person nominated by the provider, who oversees the quality and management of the service.
• The registered manager: the person who manages the home day to day, registered with Social Care Wales.

Providers also submit an annual return to CIW each year, describing how the service has performed. You can read ours on our annual returns page.

What does CIW look at when it inspects a children’s home?

CIW’s inspections are built around four themes, which are also the themes it now rates:

• Well-being: how well the service supports young people’s physical, emotional and social well-being, and whether they have a voice in their care.
• Care and Support: the quality of the care itself, including planning, safeguarding and how staff meet each young person’s needs.
• Leadership and Management: how the service is run, including oversight, staffing, training and governance.
• Environment: whether the home itself is safe, suitable and well maintained.

Inspectors talk to young people and staff, look at records and care plans, and see how the home runs in practice. Their findings are published in an inspection report on CIW’s website.

How do CIW ratings work?

From 1 April 2025, CIW began publishing ratings for care homes, for both children and adults, and for domiciliary support services. Rather than a single overall grade, each service is rated separately on each of the four themes, at one of four levels:

• Excellent
• Good
• Requires improvement
• Requires significant improvement

Ratings appear in inspection reports and on CIW’s website, and most services must display them at their premises and online. You can find the ratings for each of our homes on their pages, starting from our homes.

In its review of the first seven months, CIW reported that it inspected 578 services between 1 April and 31 October 2025, including 117 children’s care homes, and that 92.5% of all the ratings it awarded were “excellent” or “good”. Where improvement was needed, it most often related to leadership and management. You can read the review on CIW’s website.

How to read a CIW inspection report

A rating tells you a lot at a glance, but the report behind it tells you more. When reading one, it’s worth looking at:

1. The date. How recent is the inspection, and has anything significant changed since?
2. All four themes. A service can be strong in one area and developing in another. Look at the pattern, not just the best rating.
3. What young people said. Reports often include young people’s own views, which are some of the most useful evidence there is.
4. Areas for improvement. These aren’t necessarily a warning sign. What matters is whether the provider has responded to them.
5. Leadership. Given that leadership and management is where improvement is most often needed, look closely at what inspectors said about oversight and support for staff.

How we approach quality at Silver Lining Care

Inspection is a snapshot; quality is what happens on every shift in between. For us, that means:

• a clear, trauma-informed model of care, guided by the Trauma Recovery Model and PACE;
• strong leadership oversight, with our Responsible Individual and Managing Director involved day to day;
• a Behaviour Management Team that attends a home in person within 24 hours of any significant incident to lead a structured debrief;
• specialist training from our own training company, SLC Training.

In our 2025 inspection, CIW’s feedback highlighted strong leadership oversight, timely support and bespoke training in response to events and incidents. You can read more on our training page.

Frequently asked questions about CIW

What does CIW stand for?

Care Inspectorate Wales, the regulator of social care and childcare services in Wales.

Do children’s homes in Wales get CIW ratings?

Yes. Since 1 April 2025, CIW has published ratings for care homes for both children and adults.

What is the difference between CIW and Social Care Wales?

CIW regulates services, such as children’s homes. Social Care Wales regulates the workforce, registering people like residential child care workers and managers.

Where can I find a children’s home’s inspection report?

On CIW’s website, where you can search for a service by name or area. Many providers, including us, also show their ratings on their own websites.