Children’s Placement Hub
A trusted digital platform giving local authorities real-time visibility of verified children’s placement availability.
Supporting commissioning teams, brokerage teams and emergency duty services through secure, structured placement enquiries and live provider availability.
10
Registered Providers
Growing during the pilot
25
Live Available Placements
Updated in real time
£0
Cost to Councils
£0 during the pilot
Purpose
Why local authorities need this hub
Finding suitable children’s placements often relies on repeated telephone calls, lengthy email chains and outdated vacancy lists. This creates delays, increases administrative burden and reduces visibility across the placement market.
The Children’s Placement Hub provides a single trusted source of verified provider availability, helping commissioning teams identify suitable placements faster while maintaining safeguarding and local authority decision-making.
Key benefits
What the hub delivers
Faster Placement Searches
View live placement availability from verified participating providers without repeated manual outreach.
Better Market Visibility
Understand current provider capacity, registration status and specialist services in one place.
Secure Structured Enquiries
Replace fragmented emails and phone calls with consistent, auditable placement enquiries.
Safeguarding First
No child-identifiable information is shared before placement discussions begin.
Who uses the platform
Designed for the teams making placements happen
- Local Authority Commissioning Teams
- Placement Brokerage Teams
- Emergency Duty Teams (EDT)
- Children’s Services Managers
- Regional Commissioning Partnerships
- Ofsted Registered Children’s Homes
- Supported Accommodation Providers
- Independent and Charitable Providers
Safeguarding & governance
Built around safeguarding and accountability
- Safeguarding-first architecture
- GDPR and Data Protection by design
- No child-identifiable information during enquiries
- Transparent Ofsted registration
- Full enquiry audit trail
- Neutral platform with no ranking manipulation
- Local authority decision-making always retained
MyPlacementHub supports placement decisions but never makes them. Every placement decision remains entirely with the commissioning local authority.
Future development
Future capability
The Children’s Placement Hub will continue to evolve through collaboration with local authorities and providers. Future functionality may include:
- Vacancy alerts
- Provider availability forecasting
- Regional commissioning dashboards
- Secure messaging
- Placement analytics
- API integrations
- Performance reporting
Help shape the future of children’s placements
Join the Children’s Placement Hub pilot and work alongside local authorities and verified participating providers to improve placement visibility, reduce search times and build a trusted national platform.