Guidance

Children's social care surveys: guidance for providers

Guidance for children's social care providers about distributing the 2026 annual survey, including a promotional poster that they can use.

• From: Ofsted
• Published: 12 January 2016
• Last updated: 2 February 2026
  Show all updates

  1. 2 February 2026

     Updated the guidance and promotional poster for social care providers to share the 2026 children's social care survey.

  2. 4 February 2025

     Updated guidance and promotional posters for social care providers for 2025 surveys.

  3. 5 February 2024

     Updated guidance and promotional posters for social care providers for 2024 surveys.

  4. 6 February 2023

     Updated guidance and promotional posters for social care providers for 2023 surveys.

  5. 4 February 2022

     Updated guidance and promotional posters for social care providers for 2022 surveys.

  6. 1 February 2021

     Our 2021 social care point in time survey is now live: this guidance for providers explains the process and how to send out links, along with a promotional poster.

  7. 10 February 2020

     We have added the 2020 social care annual survey guidance for providers and accompanying poster.

  8. 29 April 2019

     Updated guidance and promotional posters for social care providers for 2019 surveys.

  9. 1 October 2018

     Updated the promotional poster: boarding schools can use this to publicise Ofsted's annual surveys.

  10. 9 July 2018

      Updated promotional poster for providers.

  11. 14 May 2018

      Updated guidance and promotional poster for providers for the 2018 social care surveys.

  12. 25 August 2017

      Added survey dates for further education colleges, boarding schools and residential special schools to the guidance and poster.

  13. 19 June 2017

      Updated for 2017 survey: 19 June to 13 August 2017.

  14. 12 January 2016

      First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Social care online surveys 2026: guidance for providers

HTML

Social care online surveys 2026: promotional poster for providers

ODT, 113 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Details

The annual children’s social care survey allows Ofsted to hear what children and young people, parents, staff, social workers and other professionals say about social care settings. These include children’s homes, adoption agencies, fostering services and residential family centres.

This guidance explains how providers can send out links to the survey on Ofsted’s behalf.

Read the findings from our annual surveys.