Can local authorities deliver the housing offer that care leavers need?
By Caitlin Large, Senior Consultant
Councils have a key moment to design support for young people leaving care that not only aligns with immediate Whitehall requirements but offers an opportunity to set in place modern, efficient and people-focused local services that can deliver the best chance in life.
The precariousness of care leavers’ experiences has been sharply documented recently, with reports of unstable housing, poor employment options and limited wider support for those who have turned 18. These and the Government’s investigation into early deaths of care leavers have shown what can happen when the transition out of care is not properly supported. And all of this is front of mind as councils prepare the Supported Housing Needs Assessments and Strategies required by March 2027 and consider whether their housing markets, support services and commissioning arrangements can deliver local ambition.
A young person leaving care needs somewhere safe to live, but they also need support to develop the skills and confidence to sustain a tenancy, and a pathway into more independent accommodation when they are ready. For the young person, this is one journey. Within a council, it can cross children's services, adult social care, housing, benefits and commissioning. The challenge is to bring these pieces together and understand what young people need at each stage, so that the local offer is backed by systems that can deliver it.
In 2025, around nine in ten care leavers aged 19 to 21 were living in “suitable accommodation” – a measure that says little about whether that is the right accommodation, at the right time; whether young people can move on when they are ready; or whether they feel supported to do so. Gaps in this process have consequences for young people that also create costs for local authorities: in 2024/25, more than 4,500 care leavers aged 18 to 20 were assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness, and around two thirds were already homeless when they sought help.
To get this right for care leavers, councils need to recognise care experience as a supported housing need – but also consider whether the local market can provide the right options at each stage and understand that this is more than a compliance exercise. This is why, in doing this work with councils and local authorities, ICC starts by building a shared understanding of people moving through the system, mapping their needs against existing supply and future demand, and using the evidence to identify where the market needs to change.
The result is a supported housing strategy that can be used not just to demonstrate need, but to guide commissioning, investment and partnership decisions. Used well, the needs assessment should help Children’s Services, housing and partners build a shared picture of the whole pathway: who needs support, what type of support they need, for how long, where the gaps are, and what accommodation needs to be available at each stage. A joined-up needs assessment should also enable councils to look beyond organisational siloes and separate budgets when considering the costs of supported accommodation. A gap in one part of the pathway can create pressure elsewhere: a lack of move-on accommodation can extend housing stays; insufficient support can make tenancies harder to sustain; and fragmented commissioning can make it harder to see the cost of meeting need.
A whole-system view allows councils to consider these pressures alongside outcomes. And for care leavers, it provides a chance to test whether the local housing market can deliver the council’s promise.
Identifying the supported housing needs that care leavers have, then, is not simply to see where there might be gaps in the path. It is to shape the market around the people travelling the path. That might mean commissioning new provision, reshaping existing contracts, working with housing associations and private landlords, increasing move-on supply, developing different models of support or bringing children's services and housing commissioning closer together under joint ambitions.
Whether responsibilities sit within the same organisation or across authorities, the priority is the same: understand the young person's journey, assess the supply behind it, identify the gaps and start shaping the market.
The local offer gives councils an opportunity to be ambitious about what care leavers should be able to expect. The next step is to make sure the housing market can deliver it.
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