The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act (Royal Assent, May 2026) and the DfE's implementation plan Delivering the Children's Social Care Reset describe the most ambitious overhaul of children's social care in a generation. The direction is clear: a whole-system shift towards earlier intervention, sustained family relationships, and high-quality placements for children who cannot remain at home.
Regional Care Co-operatives are central to that shift. They are not simply a new commissioning arrangement for fostering. They represent a new organisational form for the delivery of children's services across a region — bringing together local authorities, health, justice, and the voluntary sector to plan, commission, and deliver better outcomes for children and families.
The DfE's implementation plan organises reform around four outcomes: children and families staying together with the help they need; children being safe in and outside their homes; children supported by their family network; and children in care and care leavers having stable, loving homes. RCCs are the vehicle through which much of this will be delivered at scale.
CHARMS supports all of it.
What RCCs Need to Deliver
The DfE's reform programme spans several interconnected service areas, all of which fall within the RCC operational remit. Each generates case records, assessment activity, multi-agency correspondence, and performance data — each requires a system practitioners can use with confidence and commissioners can trust to evidence outcomes.
Families First Partnership
Brings together targeted early help and Child in Need support into a seamless offer, co-ordinated by a Family Help Lead Practitioner. Multi-agency child protection teams — drawing on social workers, health, police, and education professionals — operate within this framework.
Fostering and Placement Sufficiency
The Renewing Fostering plan sets a national ambition to grow foster care capacity by 10,000 places, backed by £88 million over two years. Regional recruitment hubs, assessment, approval, placement matching, and carer support all require robust operational infrastructure.
Kinship Care
Being embedded through Family Network pilots and Kinship Zones, with new statutory requirements on local authorities to publish kinship local offers and national standards setting out core expectations for kinship support.
Residential Care
Subject to tighter regulation, a new provider oversight scheme, and a clear DfE direction that institutional care should be reserved for exceptional circumstances — with capital investment channelled towards smaller, more relational provision.
Care Leavers
Supported through a national Staying Close offer from 2029, with strengthened corporate parenting responsibilities extending across public bodies and improved personal adviser provision up to age 25.
Why CHARMS for RCCs?
Most local authorities already have statutory case management systems in place and they will keep them. CHARMS does not seek to replace them. What CHARMS provides is the operational layer — the system your practitioners will actually use every day, designed entirely around their needs, not around the requirements of a statutory MIS.
An RCC operates across multiple partner authorities, across multiple service lines, and is accountable to commissioners and inspectors in a way that no individual local authority has been before. It needs a system that can flex to that structure — where partner LAs retain visibility of their own cohort, where the RCC holds the regional operational picture, and where every practitioner, carer, young person, and partner agency has the access they need.
CHARMS has been used in local authority fostering teams, regional adoption agencies, multi-agency hub environments, Children's Centres, and early help settings for more than 25 years. It is trusted by approximately 80% of independent fostering agencies in the UK and by nine Regional Adoption Agencies. It is not a new entrant to this market. It is the system that the delivery sector has consistently chosen.
Family Help and Early Intervention
Family and individual case records, Early Help Assessment, multi-agency information sharing, secure family portal access, and outcomes tracking. Works across hub, outreach, clinical, and voluntary sector settings within a single secure environment.
Foster Carer Recruitment and Assessment
The complete recruitment journey — from first enquiry through information events, preparation groups, DBS and references, assessment, panel, and approval — managed within CHARMS. Automated reminders, RAG status indicators, and QA monitoring ensure nothing falls through the gaps across a multi-LA carer pool.
Placement and Matching
CHARMS's original Find-a-Family matching algorithm identifies potential placements based on age, geography, ethnicity, and individual matching considerations — across the RCC's entire approved carer base, not just within a single authority.
Kinship Care
Kinship assessment and approval, kinship support planning, and the recording requirements for the new kinship local offer. Family network activity, Family Group Decision Making, and Lifelong Links work can all be recorded and evidenced within the system.
Looked-After Children and Care Planning
Statutory care planning, review, and recording for looked-after children — including placement stability, health, education, and permanence planning — supported within CHARMS's case management framework.
Residential and Supported Accommodation
Residential homes, supported accommodation, and residential family centres, with compliance documentation aligned to Ofsted regulatory requirements and the new provider oversight framework.
Care Leavers
Pathway planning, Staying Put, Staying Close, and personal adviser activity for care leavers — with recording designed to meet the strengthened corporate parenting and reporting requirements set out in the Act.
Multi-Agency and Multi-Authority Working
Secure, role-based access for all stakeholders — social workers, managers, partner agency staff, carers, young people, and panel members — with a complete audit trail and configurable governance to reflect the RCC's accountability structure.
OMG — Online Mail Grabber
With a single click, emails and attachments from Outlook or Gmail are saved directly to the relevant case file. For teams handling large volumes of correspondence across multiple LAs and partner agencies, the time saving is substantial.
Foster Carer App
Approved carers have secure mobile access to their own records, documents, and communications with their supervising social worker — reducing administrative burden on both sides and supporting the quality of the carer relationship.
Reporting and Performance
Generate the performance reports your RCC governance, commissioners, and inspectors require — across all service lines, in real time, all configurable. All new reports built free of charge.
Integration with Existing Systems
CHARMS is designed to sit alongside whatever infrastructure your partner LAs already have in place. We do not require displacement of existing systems — we provide the joining layer that makes your delivery services operationally coherent.
Asset-Locked Social Enterprise
Operating since 1996, never acquired by private equity. Profit is reinvested into CHARMS and the sector it serves — not extracted from it.
One Phone Number
Our helpdesk has no menus and no queues. Just people who know the system and understand the services it supports, based in the UK.
Free Development
Every development request is considered. Every new report is built free of charge. All system developments are funded by SCN.
Customer-Shaped
Our customers help shape CHARMS. If it doesn't work for you, tell us — and we will change it.
25+ Years' Experience
Trusted by approximately 80% of UK independent fostering agencies and nine Regional Adoption Agencies.
Cyber Essentials Plus
Certified to Cyber Essentials Plus standard. Available on G-Cloud for straightforward public sector procurement.
Already Trusted by Regional Fostering Hubs
CHARMS is already the operational platform for two established regional fostering hubs. Foster4 — one of the original DfE-funded regional recruitment hubs — uses CHARMS to manage its complete carer recruitment journey across its partner local authorities. Local Community Fostering East London similarly relies on CHARMS for its day-to-day hub operations.
Both hubs have chosen CHARMS because it was built for this work — managing enquiries, preparation groups, assessments, panel, and ongoing carer support across a multi-authority structure, in a single secure environment designed for practitioners rather than administrators.
We are actively engaged with further regional hubs and RCC pathfinder authorities as the programme develops. If you are planning your hub or RCC's digital infrastructure — whether at an early stage or preparing to go live — we would welcome a conversation.
"No organisation will ever be left behind. Our determination is that if an organisation needs our software, they will get it."
Ready to Talk About Your RCC?
Whether you are a pathfinder authority, a new wave applicant, a lead LA planning your RCC structure, or a commissioner evaluating your digital infrastructure — we are ready to talk.
Call +44 161 237 1872 or +44 1706 509 198 to discuss your needs