Children’s services are operating in one of the most challenging periods in recent memory. Rising demand, workforce pressures, widening inequalities, financial constraints and significant policy reform are reshaping the landscape. At the same time, advances in data, digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are creating new opportunities and questions about how services can better support children and families. These themes sit at the heart of Collective Insights 25-26, published by Coram-i, the innovation and improvement arm of the Coram Institute for Children.
Rather than offering simple answers, Collective Insights 2026 brings together thought leaders, practitioners, researchers, local authorities, young people and lived-experience experts to reflect on what responsible innovation looks like in children’s services today. Its central message is clear: innovation and reform are not goals in themselves. They matter only if they help create fairer, more humane systems that listen better, act earlier and improve outcomes for children and families.
Foreword
Children’s services are navigating a period of profound change. Rising demand, widening inequity, workforce pressure and fiscal constraint are now long‑standing features of the landscape. At the same time, children’s social care reform is underway, shaped by the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care and subsequent policy commitments. These reforms reflect a shared recognition that the current system is under strain and that change is both urgent and necessary. Yet reform alone will not deliver better outcomes for children and families. Policy direction must be accompanied by careful implementation, organisational learning and attention to how change is experienced in practice. Alongside structural reform, children’s services are also grappling with rapid advances in data, digital technology and artificial intelligence – developments that cut across health, education, justice and social care, and which are reshaping expectations of public services more broadly.
Collective Insights 2026 brings together voices from across this complex and evolving system to reflect on what this moment demands of us. Through thought pieces, case studies and shared learning, the publication explores both the opportunities and challenges of integrating data, digital tools and AI into children’s social care – always grounded in children’s lived experience, and with relational, ethical practice at the core.
Across the Coram Group, we see how innovation is shaped not only by technology or policy, but by values, power and practice. Too often, innovation is framed as something fast, disruptive or technical. In reality, many of the most meaningful changes described in these pages are incremental rather than dramatic. They are relational rather than transactional. They emerge from taking the time to understand the problem fully, listening carefully to children and families, and working collaboratively across professional and organisational boundaries.
The contributions in this edition reflect a system asking more searching questions of itself: who benefits from change, and who might be left behind? How do we judge success when progress is uneven and context‑dependent? What does responsible innovation look like when measured at the child’s timescale, not the policy cycle or organisational reporting period? At Coram, our role is to help hold space for these questions – connecting lived experience, practice insight, research and policy, and supporting change that is ethical, intentional and grounded in reality. This responsibility spans the whole Coram Group: our direct work with children and families, our research and policy leadership, and our convening role through Coram‑i, working alongside partners across the children’s services ecosystem.
If there is a single message that runs through Collective Insights 2026, it is this: reform and innovation are not ends in themselves. They are means to create fairer, more humane systems that listen better, act earlier and respond more effectively to children and families. Achieving that will require courage, collaboration and humility – and a commitment to learn our way forward together. I am grateful to all those who have contributed their insight, challenge and learning to this publication. I hope it informs, provokes and supports those working across children’s services as we collectively shape what comes next.
Dr Carol Homden DBE PhD
Coram Group CEO
About Coram-i
Coram-i is the innovation and improvement arm of the Coram Institute for Children, translating insight into action.
We work directly with local authorities to co-design, test and embed practical solutions to the most pressing challenges in children’s services. Our approach draws on evidence, innovation, and a commitment to ethical digital practice – supported by strategic supporters including Microsoft and EY – to strengthen capability and drive positive change across the sector.
“Being part of the Coram Innovation Incubator has been absolutely beneficial to us. We have learned so much along the way and the generating and sharing of ideas, has encouraged innovation within our LA.” –Aneesa Kaprie, Transformation Lead, London Borough of Bromley
Thought Pieces
Coram-i: insight, innovation and impact
By Tanya Coles, Development Lead at Coram-i
The period from April 2025 to March 2026 marked a year of transition for Coram-i. Rather than driving a large programme of new delivery, this was a year intentionally shaped around listening, convening and sensemaking – creating space to understand how children’s services are changing, where risks and opportunities are emerging, and how collective responses might be shaped with care and intent.
AI in children’s social care: where are we now?
At Coram-i’s AI in Children’s Social Care event, independent consultant Kevin Yong offered a wide-ranging and grounded assessment of the sector’s current position on AI adoption.
His keynote painted a picture of a field characterised by increasing interest and momentum, but also uneven readiness and significant gaps in guidance, capability and impact measurement. Drawing heavily on conversations with local authorities as well as the Local Government Association’s 2025 State of the Sector analysis, Kevin provided a crucial baseline for understanding where the sector stands, and where it may be heading.
AI in children’s social care: who benefits, and how do we know?
As artificial intelligence accelerates through every part of public service delivery, children’s social care faces both immense possibility and profound uncertainty. At Coram-i’s November AI in Children’s Social Care event, Dr Aoife O’Higgins, Director of Evidence at Foundations, the National What Works Centre for Children and Families, closed the day with three provocations. Each was designed to bring the conversation back to what matters most: children’s experiences, outcomes, and voices.
Evaluating AI in children’s social care: beyond the shallows
Artificial intelligence is already reshaping children’s social care, but according to Professor Donald Forrester, Deputy Director of The Centre for Social Care and Artificial Intelligence Learning (SCALE), we are “paddling in the shallows,” with much more on the horizon: enormous opportunities and equally significant risks.
Presenting at Coram-i’s November AI in Children’s Social Care event, Donald offered a thoughtful and often provocative exploration of how the sector can responsibly evaluate AI, even as its development outpaces traditional research cycles.
From insight to impact: AI, intersectionality and the future of children’s social care
Insight to Impact: AI, Intersectionality, and the Future of Children’s Social Care brought together leaders from across children’s social care, data science, policing, academia and policy to explore one of the defining questions facing the sector: how can artificial intelligence (AI) and data be harnessed to improve outcomes for children and families, without undermining the relational, ethical and human foundations of practice?
AI and the future of children’s social care: why waiting is not an option
By Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein CBE FREng, President of City St George’s, University of London
A reflection on the history of AI, the current state of AI, and what it really means for children’s social care.
Case studies
Six months with the Storyteller app
By Coram and After Cloud
Developed in partnership with Coram-i and After Cloud, Storyteller is a place where digital content can be collected, collated, curated for, with, and by children in care.
Storyteller empowers trusted adults around the child to easily
capture meaningful day-to-day moments. Storyteller gives
children a genuine voice in their care. Through photos, videos,
voice notes and personal reflections, children become active co-authors of their story, with their views meaningfully heard and reflected in care planning. It’s already making a significant impact, and we want you to see how.
Children at the heart of data: insights from young people on the Data Standards project
By Coram, Open Data Institute and Social Finance
Social Finance, the Open Data Institute and Coram are working
in partnership to develop data and interoperability standards
for social care.
This programme aims to tackle one of the most persistent challenges across children’s services: how to share the right information, with the right people, at the right time. Fragmented systems, inconsistent data, and siloed working mean that crucial details about a child’s life often sit in separate databases that don’t speak to one another.
Ask Me What Matters: listening and responding at scale to care-experienced young people
By Coram Voice
Over the past two years, Coram Voice has been working with four local authorities to close that gap by integrating child-led wellbeing questions into routine practice. Each area began by working with care experienced children and young people to identify what matters most to them, and to agree when, how, and with whom these conversations should take place – whether during care planning, pathway planning, or regular check-ins with trusted adults.
The Coram Institute for Children
Launched in 2025, the Institute is the UK’s very first ‘think and do’ centre solely dedicated to advancing the life chances of children and young people, both at home and internationally, and committed to turning insight into impact in both policy and practice.
It incorporates Coram’s existing portfolio of research activity and has at its heart the views and experiences gained from delivering to hundreds of thousands of children and young people, informed by our experience as the country’s first and longest continuing children’s charity since being established as the Foundling Hospital in 1739.
From participation to practice: how young people and practitioners build skills for navigating conflict
By Coram LEAP Confronting Conflict
The Leadership & Enterprise programme supports young people and the adults who support them to develop practical skills for navigating conflict, strengthening communication, and building healthier relationships. Across a series of interactive workshops, participants explore topics such as emotional regulation, understanding needs, boundaries, facilitation, and leadership in youth settings.
Removing practical barriers to using the Setting Up Home Allowance
By Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council and Coram Voice
In April 2023, Coram Voices’ A National Voice (ANV), England’s national children in care council, launched the ‘Grand Campaign’ focusing on the Setting Up Home Allowance after the Government announced it was increasing the amount from £2000 to £3000.
Care-experienced young people reported that support varied widely across the country: They were receiving different amounts, often lacked clarity about what the allowance could be used for, and were unsure how to access it.
In response, ANV produced a report containing local and national recommendations aimed at improving both policy and practice.
Moving the Box: Re-thinking equity in the early years
In recent years, the ambition to close the opportunity gap in early education has become increasingly urgent. National data continues to show that while overall attainment in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has improved, too many children, particularly those experiencing disadvantage, still start school without a Good Level of Development (GLD).
Against this backdrop, Coram Hempsall’s Moving the Box project offers a timely and distinctive response: one that challenges assumptions about fairness, questions “one size fits all” approaches, and places equity firmly at the centre of early years practice.
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