New admissions and physical intervention: a child's first days in a children's home

A twelve-year-old arrives at a children's home at nine o'clock on a Friday night. She has a carrier bag of clothes, a placement plan that runs to two pages, and no idea who any of the adults around her are. The staff on shift know her name, her date of birth and a line in the referral that says "can become physically aggressive when distressed". By midnight, she is trying to leave through the kitchen door and a member of staff is deciding whether to hold her.

At ProActive Approaches we approach this moment through #AimingForZero, the position our founder Simon Gower has held since 2016. A reduction target implies there is a number of restraints that is acceptable. Zero removes that permission, and it changes what a team asks after an incident. For a new admission, the question is not "was the hold justified?" but "what did we fail to know, plan or offer before she walked through the door?" The first days of a placement are when a child is most frightened, when staff know least about them, and when physical intervention is most likely to cause lasting harm to the relationship. They are also the days that most homes plan for least.

Regulation 20 of the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 applies from the first minute: restraint is only permitted to prevent injury or serious damage to property, and it must be necessary and proportionate. That is the legal floor. This guide is about the work that sits above it, so that a child's first experience of a new home is not being held by strangers.

Why the first days carry so much risk

Most residential teams can name a child whose placement went wrong in the first week. The pattern is familiar. A child arrives in crisis, often at short notice and often late in the day. Staff have limited information. The child has no reason yet to trust anyone. Something small, such as a rule about phones or bedtime, becomes a flashpoint, and within hours a team that has never met this child is physically intervening.

Several things make this period different from the rest of a placement.

• The child is in survival mode. Many children arrive after a breakdown of a previous placement, a police protection order or an emergency move. Their nervous system is already on high alert. New smells, new faces and new rules all read as threat.
• Staff do not yet know the signs. The early indicators of distress that an experienced key worker would spot are invisible to a team who met the child that afternoon. Opportunities to de-escalate are missed because nobody knows what they look like for this child.
• Information is thin or skewed. Referral paperwork tends to list incidents, diagnoses and risks. It rarely says what calms the child, what they enjoy, or which adults they have trusted in the past.
• Rules arrive before relationships. Homes often explain their expectations on the first evening. For a frightened child, a list of rules from strangers can feel like the start of another battle.

None of this means the new child is the problem. It means the conditions in the first days make distressed behaviour more likely, and those conditions are largely within the home's control.

What the regulations expect at admission

The care planning standard in regulation 14 requires that children "have a positive experience of arriving at or moving on from the home". It also requires the registered person to ensure children are admitted only if their needs fall within the home's statement of purpose, and that arrangements are in place for "the effective induction of each child into the home".

That is a meaningful duty. A placement that begins with a restraint on the first night is hard to describe as a positive experience of arriving. When Ofsted inspectors look at early restraints, they are likely to ask what the home knew before the child arrived, whether the admission was matched properly against the statement of purpose, and what the induction actually involved.

Regulation 35 also applies from the first day. Any measure of restraint must be recorded within 24 hours, the registered person must speak to the member of staff within 48 hours, and someone must speak to the child about it within five days. For a child who has only just arrived, that five-day conversation may be one of their first real conversations with the home's leadership. It deserves care.

Before the child arrives

The most effective restraint reduction work for new admissions happens before the child is in the building. Even in an emergency placement there is usually some time, and it should be spent on understanding the child rather than only on preparing the room.

Matching honestly

The first question is whether this home can meet this child's needs. Pressure on placements is intense, and teams are often asked to take children whose needs sit at the edge of their statement of purpose. A home that accepts a child it cannot support is setting up both the child and its staff to fail, and physical intervention is often where that failure shows first. Registered managers should feel able to ask hard questions of placing authorities, and to record the answers.

Asking what works, not only what goes wrong

Ask the placing social worker, previous carers, school and, where possible, family members the same set of questions:

• What helps this child feel safe when they are frightened?
• Which adults has the child trusted, and what did those adults do differently?
• What are the earliest signs that the child is becoming distressed?
• What has made things worse in the past, including any approaches to physical intervention that harmed the relationship?
• Does the child have any medical, sensory or communication needs that would change how staff should respond?
• Has the child experienced restraint before, and how do they describe it?

A child who has been held face down in a previous placement, or who has experienced physical abuse, may respond to any physical contact as a threat. Knowing this before the first evening changes how staff position themselves, how they speak and how quickly they step back.

Building an interim plan

A full behaviour support plan takes time to develop properly. A new child should still arrive with an interim plan that pulls together what is known: likely triggers, early signs, what to try first, who the child seems to respond to, and what staff should avoid. It should be short enough that every member of staff on shift has actually read it. An initial physical intervention risk assessment belongs alongside it, so that if a hold is ever considered, staff already know about any health or history factors that would make it more dangerous.

The arrival itself

How a child arrives shapes the first hours. Small decisions here prevent more incidents than any technique taught on a course.

• Plan the timing where you can. A late-night arrival with a tired, hungry child and a skeleton night team is the highest-risk combination. Where there is any flexibility, push for a daytime arrival.
• Choose the welcoming adults deliberately. Put the staff with the strongest relational skills on shift for the first days. Avoid a rota that means the child meets ten different adults in the first 48 hours.
• Lead with comfort, not rules. Food, a warm drink, a tour of their own room and a chance to settle should come before any explanation of house expectations. The rules can wait until the morning.
• Give the child some control. Let them choose where to sit, whether to unpack, what to eat. Children who arrive with no say in anything often try to take control in other ways.

The first 72 hours

The first three days are where most early restraints happen. Treat them as a distinct phase of the placement, with its own plan.

Keep demands low. This is not the time to insist on school attendance the next morning, a full chore rota or a phone handed in at 9pm. Every expectation that can wait should wait. That is not lowering standards. It is recognising that a child who is overwhelmed cannot meet them yet, and that forcing the issue is the fastest route to a confrontation.

Increase observation without increasing control. Staff should be noticing everything: what the child eats, when they go quiet, which conversations they lean into, what happens just before they become agitated. Record these observations in a simple daily log and use them to update the interim plan every day.

Give space before contact. If the child becomes distressed, the first response should almost always be to step back, reduce the number of adults present and give them room. A child who heads for the door may be trying to escape a feeling rather than the building. Regulation 20 does not allow restraint simply to stop a child leaving an open home, and a hold at this point can make a child far more likely to go missing later. Our guide to physical intervention training for children's homes sets out how this fits with the wider training picture.

Hold a short daily huddle. At each handover, the team should ask: what have we learned about this child today, what helped, what nearly went wrong, and what will we do differently tomorrow?

If a hold happens early in a placement

Sometimes, despite good planning, a child's safety or someone else's will require physical intervention in the first days. When that happens, the response afterwards matters even more than usual.

The child may conclude that this home is the same as the last one, that adults here hurt people, or that the placement is already over. Repairing that belief is the priority. A trusted member of staff should check on the child as soon as they are calm, without blame, and the formal conversation required by regulation 35 should be done by someone the child is likely to talk to, not simply whoever is on duty.

The staff debrief should focus on what the team did not know and what they could have done differently in the hours beforehand. A hold in the first week is often a sign that information was missing, the plan was too thin, or the arrival was rushed. Feed that learning back to the placing authority and into the home's admissions process, so the next child benefits.

Finally, update the interim plan straight away. What the team has learned about this child's triggers and early signs should shape every shift that follows.

Training for admissions, not just incidents

Most physical intervention training spends its time on techniques. Physical intervention is the smallest part of what a setting does about distressed behaviour, and the only part most training covers well. New admissions are where the gap is most obvious, because the skills that matter most in the first days are relational: reading a stranger's distress, offering choice, managing your own anxiety and stepping back early.

Training aligned with the RRN Training Standards should cover primary and secondary prevention as well as any physical skills, and it should be tailored to the population a home actually supports. For homes that take emergency or short-notice placements, scenario practice built around the first evening of a new admission is worth far more than another hour of holds. Our physical intervention training is built this way, with a documented track record of reductions of up to 80 per cent in restraint use. You can find more about our work with residential teams on our children's services page.

Frequently asked questions

Can we restrain a new child to stop them leaving on their first night?

Not simply to stop them leaving. In an open children's home, regulation 20 only permits restraint to prevent injury to any person or serious damage to property. If leaving would place the child at immediate risk of serious harm, the test may be met, but the decision must be necessary and proportionate and fully recorded. In most cases, staying close, following at a distance and following your missing-from-care procedures is safer and more effective.

What if the referral contains very little information?

Push for more before the child arrives, and record what you asked for and what you received. If the placement goes ahead with limited information, plan the first days on the assumption that staff do not know the child's triggers: keep demands low, staff the shifts with experienced people and review the interim plan daily.

Should a new child have a behaviour support plan from day one?

They should have an interim plan from day one, drawn from the referral, previous carers and the child's own views where possible. A full behaviour support plan should be developed over the following weeks as the team gets to know the child. The interim plan should never be a copy of the previous placement's plan without review.

How should we explain physical intervention to a child when they arrive?

Gently, and not on the first evening unless the child asks. When the time is right, explain that adults in the home will always try to help without holding anyone, that holding is only ever used to keep people safe, and that the child will always be asked afterwards how it felt. Many children have never been told this, and hearing it can lower their fear.

A child's first days in a new home tell them what kind of place it is. If the first thing they learn is that the adults here will hold them, that lesson is hard to undo. If the first thing they learn is that the adults here noticed, listened and stepped back, the whole placement starts from a different place. That is what aiming for zero looks like in practice.