Staying Close scheme helps care leavers avoid a cliff-edge loss of support

What Staying Close is trying to fix

The central policy question is simple: does Staying Close replace the care-leaver cliff edge, or only soften it for a limited number of young people? The scheme was built for young people leaving children’s residential care homes, where the loss of everyday support can be abrupt, isolating and destabilising. It is meant to create a bridge at the point where too many young people are expected to manage housing, money, health and relationships with far less backing than most of their peers.

Staying Close is designed as an enhanced support package, and it is intended to be comparable to Stay Put. That matters because Stay Put allows care leavers in foster care to remain with former foster carers until age 21, giving them a gradual transition rather than an immediate break. Staying Close tries to offer a similar landing place for young people who have been in children’s homes, where the route into adulthood can otherwise feel much harder and more solitary.

Why the cliff edge still matters

The idea of a cliff edge is not just rhetoric. Before the Children and Social Work Act 2017, Personal Adviser support generally only had to continue to age 21 unless a young person was in education or training. The 2017 Act changed that by introducing a duty on local authorities in England to provide Personal Adviser support to all care leavers up to age 25, if they want it. That reform recognised that 18 is not a realistic finish line for adulthood, particularly for young people who have already lost the stability of family support.

Even with that change, campaigners and the Children’s Commissioner for England continue to warn that many young people still experience a sudden loss of support when they leave care. Help at Hand, the Commissioner’s advice and assistance service, supports care leavers up to age 25 and says many raise concerns about the abruptness of that transition. In practice, the cliff edge is not one single moment. It is the point at which housing, emotional support, money and advocacy can all disappear at once.

How the scheme is meant to work

Staying Close was not introduced as a vague promise. In January 2023, the Department for Education issued funding guidance for local authorities applying to support young people leaving care from children’s homes. In 2023-24, it allocated total grant funding of £12,595,152.95 to 27 new local authorities to deliver the programme. That funding matters because the scheme depends on local delivery, and local delivery is where patchiness can either be fixed or reinforced.

The model is designed to reduce homelessness, improve emotional and mental wellbeing, increase suitable and sustainable accommodation, improve consistency of support workers, and build lifelong support networks. Those goals are closely connected. A stable worker who knows the young person can help keep appointments, challenge poor decisions, and spot mental health strain before it becomes crisis. A decent place to live is not enough on its own if the young person also lacks relationships, income and someone to call when things go wrong.

What support can look like in practice

Official guidance makes clear that support for care leavers is broader than housing alone. Care leavers may be eligible for help with council tax reduction or exemption, help with rent deposits or guarantors, and help with utility bills and internet costs. Those small interventions can determine whether a young person can actually hold onto a tenancy, access work or study, and stay connected to services and people who matter.

• Council tax reduction or exemption can ease the pressure at the start of independent living.
• Rent deposits and guarantors can open the door to accommodation that would otherwise be out of reach.
• Help with utility bills and internet costs can keep a flat liveable and a young person connected.

Those practical supports are not extras. For care leavers, they are often the difference between moving forward and dropping back into instability. That is especially true when there is no family home to return to if a tenancy fails or income stops.

Why the stakes are so high

The policy case for Staying Close becomes stronger when set against the data. A parliamentary briefing cited a NEET rate of 38 per cent among 19-21-year-olds with care experience. It also said around one in three care leavers become homeless within two years of leaving care. Those numbers describe more than individual hardship. They point to a system that still leaves too many young people trying to build adult lives without the practical and emotional infrastructure others take for granted.

Charities including Become and Barnardo’s have long argued that care leavers often have to leave care before they feel ready, without the family housing, financial help and informal backup that many other young adults can rely on. That gap has public health consequences as well as social ones. Homelessness, unstable accommodation and poor transitions into work or education all increase the risk of anxiety, depression, missed appointments and long-term disadvantage. When support falls away too fast, the cost is borne by the young person first, but it is also felt by local services, health systems and housing teams later.

The real test is consistent delivery

The most important measure of Staying Close is not the elegance of the policy but the consistency of its delivery. A scheme that reaches only some local authorities, or works well only where staffing and budgets are already strong, will soften the cliff edge for a fortunate few while leaving others exposed to the same abrupt losses of support. The 2023-24 funding round and the roll-out to 27 local authorities show that the state knows the gap is real. The harder question is whether the offer becomes reliable enough to feel normal, not exceptional.

That is why the wider care-leaver framework matters so much. Personal Adviser support up to 25, help from Help at Hand, and practical assistance with housing and bills all point to the same principle: adulthood has to be staged, not forced. Newer education statistics that continue to track care leavers aged 22-25 by local authority underline the same reality. Leaving care is not a single birthday problem. It is a prolonged transition, and unless support follows that reality, the cliff edge remains, even when it is padded.