Will the Cabinet Secretary provide a breakdown of the number of children and young people who have been placed in unregistered care settings in 2023, 2024 and 2025, by local authority and age?
Due to the nature of the registration requirements under the Regulation and Inspection of Social Care (Wales) Act 2016, the regulator, Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW) only holds data on the number of care home services for children operating without registration (OWR). This data is published each year in CIWs annual reports[1] and is summarised below.
|
Reporting Year |
Occurrences |
|
2022-23 |
92 |
|
2023-24 |
117 |
|
2024-25 |
74 |
Most of these OWR care home services accommodate one child or young person, but on occasion they may have more than one. Children and young people can also be moved from one OWR service to another, and these services can also be used several times for different children.
Data relating to the number of children placed in a care home without registration in each year is not held centrally by CIW but would be held by individual local authorities.
[1] Data provided by Care Inspectorate Wales 24 November 2025