Children's home handovers: what to include and a template

A handover is the ten minutes in which one team passes a house full of young people to the next. Done well, the incoming staff know who is unsettled, what has been promised and what must happen before bedtime. Done badly, they find out at 7pm, when a child asks about the phone call nobody mentioned.

This article is for registered managers, deputies and support workers in children's homes in England. It covers what a handover should contain, how to structure it, the ways it usually fails, and a template you can adapt today. It is about passing information between shifts. What happens to an incident after it has been recorded is covered in our article on incident follow-up.

The short version

• The handover has one job: the next shift should be able to keep each child safe and meet their needs without having to ask around.
• Cover every child in the same order every time, so nothing is missed because the loudest child was discussed first.
• Pass on actions with a name and a time against them, not general worries.
• Keep fact and opinion apart. "She refused tea and stayed in her room from 4pm" helps more than "she was in a mood".
• A manager or senior should read handovers regularly, because drift in practice shows there first.
• No regulation tells you what a handover must look like, so the design is yours, and it is judged by whether it works.

What the regulations say about handovers

The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 do not mention handovers by name, but they set duties that a handover helps you meet. The protection of children standard requires staff to assess whether each child is at risk of harm, taking into account information in the child's relevant plans, and to take effective action whenever there is a serious concern about a child's welfare.^[1] Staff cannot do that on a shift if the risk was known only to the team that has just gone home.

The leadership and management standard requires the registered person to ensure that the workforce provides continuity of care to each child.^[2] In a home that runs shifts, handover is where continuity is made or lost.

Case records must be kept up to date, and every entry must be signed and dated by its author.^[3] A handover is not the case record, but anything in it that matters to a child's care should also be in the daily log or the relevant plan. Do not let the spoken handover be the only place a fact lives.

What goes into a good handover

A good handover covers each child's current state, anything that changes the plan for the next shift, and anything left unfinished. Work through the same headings for every child.

For each child

• How they were during the shift: mood, sleep, eating, school or college attendance, contact with family.
• Anything that happened that the next team needs to know, with a pointer to the incident report if there is one.
• Changes to risk: a new concern, a risk assessment that has been updated, a child who is more vulnerable tonight than usual.
• Medication given, refused or due, and any health appointment or illness.
• What was promised to the child, by whom and by when.
• Plans for the next shift: activities, appointments, visitors, transport, who is doing what.

For the home

• Staffing for the next shift, including who is the shift lead and who is on call.
• Visitors expected, such as social workers, family, the independent visitor or a maintenance contractor.
• Building or vehicle problems, and anything else that affects safety or routine.
• Messages from the manager, such as a change to a child's plan or a new instruction from the placing authority.

What does not belong

Gossip about colleagues, speculation about why a child behaved as they did, and long accounts of events already written up. A handover that retells the whole shift is too long to be read. Point to the log for the detail.

How to structure the handover

Use a fixed order and a fixed template, and have the outgoing staff member lead. A fixed order means the quiet child gets the same airtime as the loud one. A fixed template means a new member of staff or an agency worker knows what is expected.

Three formats work in practice:

• A face-to-face conversation with a written record made at the time. This suits the main changeover of the day, when both teams are in the building.
• A written handover read by the incoming team, followed by questions. This helps where shifts overlap by only a few minutes.
• A short briefing for the shift lead, who then briefs the team. This is fine in a larger home, provided the written record exists too.

Whichever you choose, build the overlap into the rota. If staff are expected to hand over in their own time, or while one of them is supervising a child, the handover will be rushed.

A worked example

This is an anonymised handover entry for one child. It is short because the detail sits in the daily log.

Aisha, 15. Settled day. Up at 7.40, ate breakfast, at college until 3pm, back on the minibus at 3.45. Had a difficult phone call with her mother at 5pm and went to her room. Spoke with her at 6 and she came down for tea. No incident. Promised her a lift to her friend's on Saturday at 2pm, pending the social worker agreeing the visit; her keyworker is chasing this tomorrow. Missing-from-home risk assessment unchanged. Check in on her at 9 and again at 10. Ask about the call gently, and not in front of others.

It gives facts, one open promise with a named owner, one clear instruction for the next team and a note on how to approach a sensitive topic. It does not diagnose her mood.

Common ways handovers fail

Most handover failures come from the same small set of habits. Check yours against these.

• The handover is spoken only. If it was not written down, you cannot show it happened, and the third shift never hears it.
• It is hurried. The outgoing team is already in their coats. Fix this with rota overlap, not a reminder email.
• A few children get all the attention because they generate the incidents.
• Actions have no owner. "Someone needs to ring the school" is not a handover item. "Priya to ring the school by 10am" is.
• Opinion appears as fact. "He is being manipulative" cannot be evidenced, and it tells the next team how to feel before they have met him.
• Nobody reads the written record afterwards. If a manager never looks at handovers, staff soon stop writing them with care.
• Agency and bank staff get a thinner handover, even though they know the children least.

The manager's part

The manager checks that handovers are happening, are readable and lead to action. Reading a sample each week is enough to see this. You are looking at whether open actions get closed, whether concerns raised at handover reach the right person, and whether the tone of the writing is respectful.

A dated note on the record, such as "followed up with Tom, 12 March", shows that someone read it and acted. Without a note like that, you cannot tell afterwards whether the record was read at all.

When a significant incident happens, the handover is also where the first signal of follow-up work appears. What the manager does with it, including review, debrief and updating plans, is covered in incident follow-up in children's homes. The wider question of how a manager sees patterns across many shifts is in spotting patterns in children's home records.

A handover template you can use

Copy this into whatever you use. Complete one block per child, then the home block.

1. Child, date, shift, completed by.
2. Mood and presentation this shift, in two or three factual sentences.
3. School, college, activity or contact attended.
4. Eating, sleeping, health, medication.
5. Incidents or concerns, with a reference to the report.
6. Changes to risk or to the plan.
7. Promises and open actions: what, who, by when.
8. Instructions for the next shift.
9. Home block: staffing, visitors, building and vehicle issues, manager messages.
10. Read and acknowledged by the incoming shift lead.

Write it in the language you would use in the case record, because the child may one day read it.

Where ARC fits

ARC has a handover feature in which staff generate a handover from the day's records, draft it and mark it ready, and a manager can review it. A company can set its shift definitions and, for each home, handover times and requirements. A paper template does the same job if the habits above are in place.

Common questions

Is a handover a legal requirement in a children's home? No regulation requires a handover by name. The duties to keep children safe, to provide continuity of care and to keep case records up to date are in the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, and a handover is how most homes meet them.

Should handovers be written down? Yes. A written record shows what was passed on, protects staff and gives managers something to check. Anything important to a child's care should also be in the case record.

How long should a handover take? Long enough to cover every child and the home, and no longer. If it regularly runs far over, it is probably retelling the shift instead of passing on what matters.

Who should lead the handover? The outgoing shift lead, with input from the staff who worked most closely with each child. The incoming shift lead should confirm they have understood it.

Do agency and bank staff need a handover? Yes, and a fuller one. Give them the same template and a short summary of each child's plan and risks.

Can a handover include details from restricted safeguarding records? Only what the team needs to care for the child that shift. Use a pointer such as "see the safeguarding lead" rather than repeating allegation details.

Sources

1. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, regulation 12, the protection of children standard. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/541/regulation/12 Checked 22 October 2026.
2. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, regulation 13, the leadership and management standard. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/541/regulation/13 Checked 22 October 2026.
3. The Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, regulation 36, children's case records. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/541/regulation/36 Checked 22 October 2026.