Information about removing profit from children's residential care, and where you can find out more.
Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Act 2025, Welsh Government has committed to phasing out profit-making in children’s social care services.
This applies to children’s homes, fostering services and secure accommodation for children.
The first phase of implementation started on 1 April. Since then, all new providers of these services in Wales have to operate on a not-for-profit basis.
Welsh Government publishes newsletters about the implementation on their website.
How are we supporting the implementation?
We’re helping to roll out the policy by supporting the children’s social care workforce to be sustainable, skilled and resilient.
Our partners
Two key partner organisations play an important role in supporting the implementation of these changes: Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) and the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru (ADSS Cymru).
CIW regulates and inspects services which are affected by the removing profit policy.
These services are collectively known as 'restricted children's services' and include:
- children’s homes
- fostering services
- secure accommodation services.
CIW has to implement the changes to laws and guidance, to make sure that only not-for-profit restricted children’s services can register from 1 April.
CIW also has to make sure that existing ‘for-profit’ restricted children’s services don’t expand their services from 1 April 2027.
CIW works with other organisations to monitor and enforce requirements in the Act.
They’ll prevent not-for-profit restricted children’s service providers from making unreasonable or disproportionate financial arrangements.
You can find out more about CIW’s role on its website.
ADSS Cymru is supporting all 22 local authorities to implement the changes to respond to the legislation.
ADSS Cymru manages and holds working groups on:
- governance
- future implementation
- legal and policy
- communications and engagement.
Each group includes representatives from local authorities, as well as partner organisations involved in supporting the work.