Visits & reviews
What is a Regulation 45 review?
A Regulation 45 review is the registered person's own periodic review of the quality of care in a children's home, producing a written report on whether the home is meeting children's needs and what should change.
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</figure>Where Regulation 44 brings an outside eye, Regulation 45 is the home's own honest account of itself. Its value depends on that honesty: a review that concludes everything is satisfactory is usually a review that did not look.
It should draw on everything the home knows — independent visit reports, children's views, incidents, staffing, complaints — and reach conclusions about what needs to change rather than describing the period.
It is a document Ofsted will read, and a candid review with a clear improvement plan reads far better than a complacent one, even where it identifies real problems.
What goes wrong in practice
- Written as a summary of the period rather than as an evaluation of quality.
- Independent visit findings not drawn into it, so the two processes run separately.
- No improvement actions arising, or actions with no owner or date.
- Children's views absent, which is the evidence the review is supposed to weigh most.