Introduction
This Practice Guide focuses on reunification. This summary online version complements the full version of the Reunification Practice Guide.
This Guide relates predominantly to Outcomes 1, 3 and 4 of the Children’s Social Care National Framework: families stay together and get the help they need; children are supported by their family network; and children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes. The enablers of the National Framework — leadership, workforce, and multi-agency working — have an important role in supporting the delivery of this Guide’s key principles and recommendations.
This Guide should be considered alongside the Children’s Social Care National Framework, Working Together to Safeguard Children, and local policies and procedures for care planning, safeguarding, Family Help and corporate parenting.
Reunification can be a pivotal transition for children, young people, and their families. A return home is not a single event: it is a process that requires careful assessment, purposeful planning, shared decision-making, and sustained support before, during, and after a child returns home.
Effective reunification support can help to:
- Support children and young people to return home safely and remain safely at home over time
- Strengthen parenting capacity, family relationships and day-to-day family functioning
- Address the difficulties and adversities that contributed to a child entering care
- Improve children’s, young people’s and parents’ emotional wellbeing and confidence
- Build practical, emotional and community support around families
- Reduce the likelihood of reunification breakdown and re-entry into care.
Why reunification support matters
Children and young people may return home to families continuing to manage complex and overlapping pressures. These can include trauma, mental health, substance use, domestic abuse, poverty, housing insecurity, unmet special educational needs, and disabilities, and limited support networks.
The period after a child returns home can be particularly vulnerable. Families may be adjusting to separation, changes in relationships and routines, and the continuing impact of the experiences that led to care. Without appropriate support, these pressures can undermine stability and increase the likelihood of a child returning to care.
Reunification support should therefore be embedded within a coordinated, multi-agency response. Children’s social care, Family Help, education, health, housing, voluntary and community organisations, and specialist services should work together to address risks, strengthen family networks and ensure that children and families receive the right help at the right time. For more information about current policy and the relevant frameworks and guidance, read the policy and practice overview.
What do we mean by reunification?
We use the term ‘reunification’ to refer to the structured and supported return of a child or young person to their parent/s following a period in foster or residential care.
Reunification should be underpinned by ongoing assessment, planning, and support to promote safety, stability, and positive family functioning. Read the extended definitions for more detail.
What do we mean by reunification support?
We use the term ‘reunification support’ to broadly refer to the interventions, services and practical help provided to children, young people, parents, and wider family networks before, during and after a child returns home. Read the extended definitions for more detail.
We would like to acknowledge the invaluable input of our advisers who worked closely alongside our Guidance Writing Advisory Group and whose contributions have greatly enriched this Foundations Practice Guide: Kar-Man Au; Kiefer Bird; Adam Birchall (Birmingham Children’s Trust); Matt Clayton (Coventry City Council); Emeritus Professor Elaine Farmer (University of Bristol); Eavan McKay (NSPCC); Sorcha Morgan (Children and Families across borders); Rasheed Pendry (Solihull Council); Mandy Wilkins (Adopt London West); Danuta
Withington (Stoke on Trent City Council).
We would also like to thank National Children’s Bureau for their work on the systematic review that underpinned this Practice Guide.
Equality, diversity, inclusion & equity (EDIE)
As part of Foundations’ commitment to promoting equality, diversity, inclusion, and equity, our review considered how interventions aimed at supporting reunification address the needs of different populations of parents, caregivers, children, and young people.
The review explored factors that may impact access to reunification interventions and outcomes, including families’ and children’s:
- Place of residence
- Race/ethnicity/culture/language
- Gender/sex
- Education
- Age
- Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
- Religion
- Family composition
- Family’s socio-economic status
- Care experience and reasons for out-of-home care.
Our findings show that there was no evidence that reunification intervention outcomes varied according to sample gender, ethnicity, SEND status, socio-economic status, reason for being in care, or number of previous care placements.
There was some evidence that outcomes varied according to the average age of children in the sample, with samples involving older children tending to have more positive outcomes.
The evidence shows that cultural and linguistic responsiveness is central to equitable reunification practice. Families were more likely to engage when support reflected their cultural backgrounds, preferred languages, and lived realities.
Poverty, financial insecurity, and unsuitable housing were major barriers to successful reunification. Professionals identified housing as the most significant challenge, with 89.7% reporting it was frequently or sometimes a barrier; 84.7% said the same of inadequate financial support. Mental health, trauma, shame, and distrust also limited engagement, while therapeutic support was often difficult to access.
Families valued respectful, non-judgemental relationships and trusted adults. However, support varied considerably between local areas, meaning access to structured, specialist reunification help could depend on where a family lived.
Key Principles
Key principles help to ensure that accessible, acceptable evidence-based support on reunification can be effectively implemented. They draw out qualitative evidence on the views, experiences, and preferences of children, young people, and families in the UK on how to engage and work with them. They also cover qualitative evidence on effective design and implementation of interventions which support the successful reunification of children and young people with their families.
What?
- Children, young people and families should be involved in all planning for reunification from entry to care through return home and afterwards
- Practitioners should listen, communicate clearly and involve families in decisions about support, its delivery and who contributes
- Planning should include relatives, friends, foster carers, residential practitioners and other trusted people where this strengthens support
- Support should continue beyond return home and should not end simply because an order ends or statutory involvement reduces.
Why?
- Shared decisions reduce uncertainty, acknowledge separation and help children and parents understand what is happening
- Plans are more meaningful when families see their views, strengths and concerns reflected in them
- Wider networks can provide practical help, emotional continuity and early support when pressures arise
- Planned post-return support gives families time to adjust and reduces the chance that early difficulties lead to breakdown or re-entry to care.
To translate this into practice:
- Commission an offer that includes assessment, planning, transition and follow-up, with continuity of worker where possible
- Use Family Group Decision-Making, including Family Group Conferences, to help families and networks develop practical, owned plans
- Use reflective supervision to strengthen empathy, communication and timely action
- Maintain honest, consistent contact and explain how children’s and families’ views shaped decisions, including when requests cannot be met
- Set out continuing support, key relationships, follow-up contact and routes for help in transition plans
- Agree any reduction or ending of support with the child and family, not service timescales alone.
What?
- Each local area should have a reunification policy requiring return home to be considered and planned for from entry to care
- It should set out how evidence-informed approaches, such as Family Group Decision-Making, Multisystemic Therapy, Life Story Work, and Functional Family Therapy, can contribute
- These approaches should sit within one local pathway, explaining their purpose, access routes and links to assessment and care planning
- The quality and fit of support for the family matter more than the name of an intervention.
Why?
- Without a shared policy: planning can start late or if at all; interventions can be inconsistent; and families can receive mixed messages
- A common framework makes clear that safe return home should be reviewed throughout the period in care, not only when it seems imminent
- Clear governance, ownership and communication reduce gaps, delay and duplication
- Framing interventions as help towards family goals, rather than requirements imposed on parents, improves understanding and engagement.
To translate this into practice:
- Set governance, accountability, resources, and review points from entry to care onwards
- Describe local pathways, referral criteria, roles, intervention options and expectations before, during and after return
- Use common messages across children’s social care and partner agencies about the purpose and benefit of reunification support
- Use supervision and team discussion to help practitioners apply thresholds and pathways confidently
- Explain to children and families what each intervention involves, why it is proposed and what each person is responsible for
- Use referral, engagement and practitioner feedback to identify barriers, and escalate problems that cannot be resolved in individual cases.
What?
- Support should respond to each family’s identity, strengths, circumstances, and communication needs, rather than follow a standard offer
- Planning should account for racial and cultural identity, preferred language, trauma, mental health, disability, learning needs, and SEND
- Families may need changes to pace, intensity, format, or location, alongside interpretation, translation, advocacy, or extra time
- Practitioners should recognise how poverty, racism, housing instability, alcohol or drug use, and limited networks shape families’ experience of services.
Why?
- Fixed approaches can prevent families from understanding, accessing, or benefiting from support; or not meet families’ needs
- Translation alone may be insufficient when legal, court, or children’s services terms are unfamiliar
- Children, young people, and parents with SEND or communication needs can be wrongly viewed as disengaged when reasonable adjustments are absent
- Culturally responsive, accessible practice builds trust and makes support more relevant and workable.
To translate this into practice:
- Commission culturally and linguistically appropriate provision, including interpreters, translated materials, advocacy, and practitioners with relevant knowledge.
- Identify mental health and SEND needs early, and link families to specialist support before and after reunification.
- Set clear standards for reasonable adjustments and monitor engagement and outcomes for minoritised and underrepresented groups.
- Use reflective supervision to explore bias, identity, racism, communication and relationships and trust.
- Ask children and families what will help them participate; use plain language, check understanding and agree adaptations.
- Record communication needs and adaptations in plans, review them as circumstances change, and involve trusted community or cultural partners where useful.
What?
- Effective reunification needs sufficient workforce capacity, clear leadership, manageable workloads, and coordinated agency input.
- Responsibility should not sit with one worker or service. Children’s social care, family help, education, housing, health, mental health, SEND, police, youth justice, and voluntary organisations may all contribute.
- Families should receive coherent, sequenced support rather than navigate disconnected systems.
- Local provision should include the therapeutic, practical, and material help needed to make return home safe and sustainable.
Why?
- High caseloads, staff changes, and service gaps undermine individualised, relationship-based practice.
- Unclear roles and weak communication cause delay, duplication, conflicting advice, and unresolved risk.
- Families may struggle to sustain reunification without suitable housing, mental-health support, SEND provision, transport, or financial help.
- Shared capacity and accountability allow earlier action, continuity, and attention to the full range of pressures on return home.
To translate this into practice:
- Establish joint governance, pathways, escalation routes, and information-sharing arrangements across the partnership
- Agree agencies’ responsibilities for staffing, specialist input, practical support, and continuity before, during and after return
- Make safe reunification a core part of permanence planning, not an isolated task
- Use supervision to identify drift, delay, staffing gaps, service delays, and unmet resources, and escalate these quickly
- Clarify roles, coordinate one plan, and give families consistent information about responsibility for each action
- Use recording and handover systems that protect continuity when workers or services change, and help families access transport, venues, therapy, and practical resources.
What?
- Services should define the core elements of reunification practice that must be delivered consistently and those that may be adapted to local or family circumstances
- Practitioners need induction, ongoing training, specialist advice, reflective supervision, and opportunities to develop skills to support reunification.
- Monitoring and quality assurance should assess whether support is delivered as intended, whether families receive a consistent offer, and whether adaptations remain purposeful
- Training should use current evidence and translate it into everyday decisions, communication, and planning.
Why?
- Without shared standards, support can vary widely between teams, practitioners, and areas
- Practitioners may struggle to apply models confidently when training is limited or complex family needs are not explored in supervision
- Feedback, supervision, and monitoring maintain consistency while allowing a proportionate response to local context and family need.
To translate this into practice:
- Set minimum standards and core components, with clear guidance on what may be adapted and how this should be recorded
- Invest in induction, refresher training, specialist expertise, and joint learning across the partnership
- Use proportionate quality assurance that prioritises learning, consistency, and improvement, not compliance alone
- Use structured tools, observation, case discussion, and reflective supervision to strengthen use of models and evidence
- Explain clearly to families what support involves and what they can expect
- Record material changes to an intervention or plan, the reason for them, and their likely effect; promptly escalate unmet expectations caused by capacity, engagement, or service gaps.
What?
- Children, young people, and parents should be involved in decisions and understand why reunification is being considered, what happens next, and how their views affect the plan
- Information about safety, timing, support, and possible change should be honest, age-appropriate, and repeated when needed
- Involvement should continue through assessment, planning, transition, and follow-up, not be confined to one meeting
- Practice should recognise that trauma, fear, and previous adversarial experiences shape trust and engagement, with attention to fathers, babies, and younger children.
Why?
- Young people may feel powerless or unsafe when decisions are made without them or they return before they feel ready
- Parents may find engagement difficult after contact with services that felt judgmental, adversarial, or unclear
- Transparent communication and genuine influence rebuild trust and help families raise concerns before difficulties escalate
- Participation is not meaningful unless practical barriers, including transport, childcare, timing, accessibility, and suitable venues are addressed.
To translate this into practice:
- Set minimum standards for communication, involvement, follow-up, and continuity across the local offer
- Monitor who is and is not reached, including fathers and families with babies or younger children, and address unequal access and outcomes
- Provide practical help with transport, childcare, flexible appointments, and accessible, welcoming venues
- Use reflective case discussion to understand how trauma and previous experience may affect willingness to engage
- Explain decisions, invite questions, and record how children’s and parents’ views co-produce plans.
- Adapt participation to the child’s age, development, and communication needs, and coordinate agencies so families are not asked for the same information repeatedly.
What?
- Local areas should invest in structured, high-quality support that enables children to return home safely and remain there
- Investment should cover preparation before return, support through transition and sustained help after reunification
- Reunification should form part of a preventative, family-first approach that strengthens stable relationships and reduces avoidable disruption or re-entry to care
- Resource decisions must remain centred on the child’s welfare and best interests, not savings alone.
Why?
- Breakdown is traumatic for children and families and can often leading to significant disruption, including repeated changes in home, school, and relationships
- Insufficient post-return support lets difficulties escalate and increases the risk of re-entry to care
- Sustained help can prevent avoidable crisis and reduce longer-term demand on high-cost services
- Upfront investment can improve outcomes while supporting a more sustainable system response.
To translate this into practice:
- Ensure reunification practice receives long-term funding to ensure families receive the support they need
- Use local cost and outcome data to demonstrate the value of sustained support and inform commissioning
- Align partner-agency budgets and services so therapeutic, practical, and relational support is coordinated
- Plan resources beyond return home, including Family Network Support Packages and flexible assistance where appropriate
- Maintain oversight of stability and respond quickly to early signs of strain rather than waiting for crisis
- Address housing, transport, and financial hardship alongside parenting, relationships, and risk, and use children’s and families’ feedback to improve support.
What?
- Reunification planning should consider poverty, debt, unsuitable housing, and homelessness as factors affecting a family’s ability to care safely and consistently
- Assess practical and material pressures alongside relational, behavioural, and safeguarding needs
- Where housing or financial instability threatens return home, plans must include clear, time-bound actions
- For some families, suitable accommodation or essential material support must be secured before return can proceed safely and should be considered part of the reunification plan.
Why?
- Financial and housing insecurity disrupt routines, increase parental stress, and limit a family’s capacity to meet everyday needs
- These pressures can undermine improvements in parenting or relationships and increase the risk of breakdown
- Families should not be expected to resolve structural hardship through behavioural or therapeutic interventions alone
- Early coordination with housing, welfare and community services can improve living conditions and support long-term permanence.
To translate this into practice:
- Make poverty, housing, and material need routine elements of assessment, planning, and review
- Establish joint arrangements between children’s social care, housing, welfare, voluntary, and community services
- Develop agreements with housing departments to support families who need suitable long-term accommodation
- Commission emergency funds, financial advice, material assistance, and other practical support
- Use supervision to ensure financial and housing risks are considered alongside safeguarding and relationship issues
- Ask directly about income, debt, housing conditions, homelessness risk, and essential items; name the responsible agency and timescale for each action, and monitor changes after return home.
Recommendations
Recommendations summarise the best-evidenced support to enable safe, stable, and well supported reunification for children and their families.
What?
- Evidence-informed support can improve reunification outcomes, but effectiveness depends more on its fit with a family’s assessed needs, experiences, and circumstances than on any single model
- Options may include Family Group Decision-Making, problem-solving courts, multi-agency support, parenting mentoring or coaching, family finding, skills programmes, financial assistance, and child-focused support
- No single model works for every family. A standardised approach risks overlooking the diverse reasons children enter care and the complex challenges of returning home
- Holistic, strengths-based assessment should guide a combination of practical, relational, therapeutic, and specialist help.
How?
- Complete proportionate assessments of the child’s experience, parenting capacity, relationships, trauma, safety, mental health, alcohol or drug use, education, housing, finances, and wider network
- Use findings to select from a range of interventions rather than routinely offering the same programme
- Discuss options with children, young people, and parents, including what each involves and how it supports agreed reunification goals
- Tailor the type, intensity, timing, pace, and location of support to the family’s needs and stage of reunification
- Combine support where one intervention cannot meet the full range of needs, and draw on family and community relationships
- Use supervision to test relevance and proportionality; record why support is selected or adapted, monitor progress and change it promptly when it no longer meets assessed need
- Escalate gaps in provision so leaders and commissioners can improve the range and accessibility of local support.
What?
- Pressures linked to care entry may continue after return home, including difficulties with parenting, relationships, mental health, alcohol or drug use, domestic abuse, housing, finances, education or access to help
- Children may return with emotional, behavioural or developmental needs linked to experiences before care, separation or time in care
- Without structured, sustained support, these pressures can reinforce one another, destabilise family life and increase the risk of breakdown
- Evidence-based intervention should begin before return home, continue through transition and help families establish safe routines and address problems before they become crises
- Support should help families identify pressure points, strengthen parenting and communication, recognise early warning signs, plan for predictable difficulties and access continuing help.
How?
- Deliver support before, during and after return, with goals focused on the child remaining safely at home rather than physical return alone
- Identify the relational, behavioural, emotional, safeguarding and practical factors most likely to destabilise reunification
- Co-produce clear, usable safety plans and review them regularly with children and families
- Help families anticipate likely difficulties, agree who can help and plan for issues such as school attendance, childcare, illness or stress
- Offer mentoring or coaching where parents need trusted, practical guidance
- Maintain planned contact after return, track progress against goals and coordinate additional help quickly when conflict, distress, disengagement or reduced capacity emerges
- Avoid abrupt endings; agree reductions in support with the child and family and ensure they know how to access help after formal involvement ends.
What?
- Early specialist support for parents can increase the likelihood of a later safe return home
- After removal, parents may experience trauma, grief, distress, and uncertainty alongside mental health difficulties, alcohol or drug use, domestic abuse, housing instability, or other adversity linked to care entry
- Without early support, these factors can reduce parents’ capacity to engage with planning and make sustained change
- Waiting lists, thresholds, cost, transport, stigma, and unclear referral processes can reduce the time available for progress
- Active, compassionate support helps parents understand the needs most relevant to safety, engage with treatment, manage setbacks, and continue support after reunification.
How?
- Assess treatment, emotional and practical needs as soon as a child enters care, prioritising those most closely linked to safety and future return
- Make timely referrals to mental health, alcohol and drug, domestic abuse, trauma, housing, and other specialist services
- Do more than refer: explain the service, help parents make contact, confirm assessment and treatment, and link treatment goals to the reunification plan
- Advocate where waiting lists, thresholds, or gaps cause delay, and address transport, childcare, costs, digital access, and unsuitable appointment times
- Use trauma-informed, non-stigmatising practice that recognises the impact of removal on parental wellbeing
- Coordinate specialist treatment with parenting and reunification work so expectations are clear and consistent
- Where alcohol or drug use is central to care entry, consider coordinated intensive provision such as Family Drug and Alcohol Courts or an equivalent
- Set out how treatment will continue, or be re-accessed quickly, after reunification.
What?
- Multi-agency support is particularly important where families face overlapping adversities and the risk of breakdown or re-entry to care is high
- Needs may include safeguarding concerns, reduced parenting capacity, mental health difficulties, alcohol or drug use, domestic abuse, housing insecurity, and unmet education or health needs
- Children with multiple placements, and older children returning home, may need more intensive coordination because of complex experiences and relationships
- When services work separately, families can receive conflicting advice, repeated assessments and disconnected interventions, while nobody holds the whole picture
- Coordinated support brings children’s social care, family help, health, education, housing, youth justice, and specialist services into one plan.
How?
- Prioritise multi-agency input where assessment shows high risk of breakdown or re-entry, considering placement history, age, safeguarding, parenting, health, education, housing, and relationships
- Bring relevant agencies together early to agree one plan, shared outcomes, responsibilities, timescales, and review arrangements
- Name one professional to coordinate the plan and provide a consistent point of contact for the family
- Align parenting support, treatment, practical assistance, and risk management so interventions reinforce each other
- Maintain contact and support before, during, and after return, with clear information-sharing and escalation routes
- Create safety plans understood by the child, family, and agencies; monitor progress closely, and respond jointly to early instability
- Communicate consistently, reduce repeated assessments and unnecessary professional activity, and use respectful challenge when agreed actions are delayed or support is insufficient
- Maintain coordinated oversight until reunification is stable and intensive help is no longer needed.
Resources
Full Guide
Summary for Elected Members
Systematic review
Equality, diversity, inclusion & equity (EDIE) annex
Evidence annex
Technical annex on methodology
Evidence Ratings and summary
This rating is given if: the evidence is from a meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a method of synthesis that combines the results of multiple quantitative studies addressing a common research question. A meta-analysis can be used to assess the effectiveness of an intervention or programme. or a narrative synthesis
Narrative synthesis is an approach for analysing and summarising results from multiple studies using texts and words, and helps to provide an overall assessment of the strength of the evidence about the effectiveness of a specific intervention(s). of at least two randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trials or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. studies that were conducted in the UK or comparable high-income country; and have scored low on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with a minimum sample size of 20 in each group (the intervention and comparison group); and demonstrates effectiveness of the intervention(s).
This rating is given if: the evidence is from a meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a method of synthesis that combines the results of multiple quantitative studies addressing a common research question. A meta-analysis can be used to assess the effectiveness of an intervention or programme. or a narrative synthesis
Narrative synthesis is an approach for analysing and summarising results from multiple studies using texts and words, and helps to provide an overall assessment of the strength of the evidence about the effectiveness of a specific intervention(s). of at least two randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trials and/or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. studies that were conducted in the UK or a comparable high-income country; and have scored at least moderate on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with at least 20 participants in the intervention group and less or more than 20 participants in the comparison group; and demonstrates efficacy of the intervention(s).
This rating is given if: the evidence is from one randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trial or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. study that was conducted in the UK or a comparable high-income country; and has scored low or moderate on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with less or more than 20 participants in each group (the intervention and comparison group); and demonstrates efficacy of the intervention(s).
Recommendation
Rating
