The organisations we work with.
We believe great care happens in partnership. We work alongside Lovin' Care™, national bodies, regulators, psychology specialists and sector membership organisations whose values and standards align with our own.
Ofsted
All of our services are either registered with Ofsted, or in the process of registration. Ofsted is the independent regulator of children's social care in England, inspecting and reporting on the quality and safety of our homes against the Children's Homes Regulations and Quality Standards.
Our work with Lovin' Care™
At Sapling & Stone we believe children deserve to experience appropriate, safe, unconditional care and genuine warmth from the adults around them. Not care that is merely competent or compliant - care that feels like being loved.
Love is not something to be avoided in residential care
For a long time, adults working in children's homes were taught that love was something to keep at arm's length - too risky, too personal, too easily misread. Yet the very first principle of England's Children's Homes Quality Standards is that children in residential care should be "loved, happy, healthy".
Expressed professionally, safely and within healthy boundaries, love is not a risk to be managed. It is fundamental to helping children recover from trauma and develop secure attachments. Attachment research and the neuroscience of early development - work such as Sue Gerhardt's Why Love Matters - shows that warm, attuned, dependable relationships are what allow a child's brain and sense of self to grow.
What Lovin' Care™ is
Lovin' Care™ is a love-led practice programme developed by Children's Homes Quality (CHQ), an independent English organisation dedicated to supporting children's homes to provide outstanding care. Created by Margaret Davies, CHQ's Training and Development Lead, and documented in the Scottish Journal of Residential Child Care (2023), it began as a small-scale project to help residential teams give - and name - love safely, professionally and confidently.
Inspired by Scotland's Independent Care Review and grounded in attachment theory, CHQ now offers a Lovin' Care™ training pathway for leaders and staff, and a free Lovin' Care™ Network bringing together practitioners, leaders and adults with lived experience of care. The published evidence is early and small in scale, but the direction is clear and the principles are firmly rooted in what we already know about how children heal.
Read about love-led practiceHow it sits alongside our model of care
Lovin' Care™ is not a separate initiative bolted onto our practice. It is the thread running through our trauma-informed, attachment-focused and relationship-based model - giving language and permission to something our frameworks already point towards.
PACE
Playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy are how love-led practice actually sounds in a corridor conversation, at the dinner table or after a difficult day.
The House Model of Parenting
Safety and structure form the foundations; warmth, delight and unconditional positive regard are what make the house feel like a home worth growing up in.
Positive Behaviour Support
Behaviour is understood as communication. Love-led practice keeps the relationship intact while needs are met and restrictive responses are reduced.
Restorative practice
Repair matters more than blame. Children learn that a relationship can survive conflict - often for the very first time.
Professional love, and learning each child's language
Our adults are supported to think carefully about professional love: what it is, what it asks of us, and how it is held safely within a therapeutic relationship. We explore how each child experiences care, acceptance and belonging - including their individual "love languages".
For one child, feeling loved might be a favourite meal cooked without being asked. For another, it is someone who remembers the name of their form tutor, sits through a hospital appointment, or simply keeps showing up on the days that are hardest. Knowing the difference is skilled work, and we treat it that way.
Clear boundaries, always
This is never about blurred boundaries, and it is never about replacing families. Children's relationships with their parents, siblings and wider networks are protected and championed.
Love-led practice means something more ordinary and more powerful: consistent experiences of kindness, warmth, safety, advocacy, encouragement and unconditional positive regard - the things every child deserves, delivered by professionals who are well trained, well supervised and clear about their role.
A protective factor that lasts a lifetime
Many children arriving in residential care have never experienced healthy, appropriate expressions of love. Some have learned that closeness is unsafe, conditional or something that disappears without warning. When adults model warmth safely, reliably and without expectation of anything in return, children begin to build a different template - one they can carry into friendships, work, parenting and their own emotional wellbeing long into adulthood.
That is why we treat this as core practice rather than a nice extra. It may be one of the most enduring things a children's home can give.
How this shapes Sapling & Stone
- Recruitment - we hire for warmth, humility and relational capacity, not just qualifications and shift cover.
- Induction and training - every adult explores professional love, attachment, trauma and boundaries before they ever hold a shift alone.
- Supervision - a protected space to talk honestly about attachment, closeness, endings and the emotional weight of caring well.
- Reflective practice - regular team reflection, supported by our clinical partners, so practice is thought about rather than simply performed.
- Everyday care - bedtime routines, birthdays, favourite meals, lifts to training, someone in the crowd at the match.
- Culture and leadership - leaders model the same warmth towards the team that we ask the team to offer children.
Working alongside Lovin' Care™ strengthens our ambition to provide sector-leading, evidence-informed care that goes well beyond minimum standards - and to send children into adulthood knowing, without question, that they were loved.
+ProActive Approaches
Behaviour support training
A national training provider of trauma-informed, attachment-aware behaviour support training - BILD ACT and RRN certified - with a proven track record of reducing restrictive practice and restraint.
How we work together: Every member of our care team is trained in +ProActive Approaches so that de-escalation, relational repair and the reduction of restrictive practice are embedded in everyday life - not reserved for moments of crisis.
BILD ACT & the Restraint Reduction Network
Certification & standards
Bild Association of Certified Training (ACT) is the UK charity that certifies training services including any restrictive element, against the Restraint Reduction Network (RRN) Training Standards.
How we work together: We only use BILD ACT certified, RRN-aligned training providers. This independent assurance means our practice meets the national benchmark for safer, rights-based and least-restrictive responses.
Meadows Psychology Service
Clinical psychology
A specialist psychology service led by clinical psychologists with over 20 years' experience across social care, NHS mental health and the independent sector - at the forefront of trauma-informed practice.
How we work together: Meadows provides our clinical leadership: psychological formulation, consultation to the staff team, bespoke assessment and direct therapeutic input - ensuring every placement is psychologically informed from day one.
Northamptonshire Children's Trust
Local authority partner
The independent trust that delivers children's social care across Northamptonshire on behalf of the local authorities, including looked-after children's services and the Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Partnership.
How we work together: We work in close partnership with the Trust as a local provider - aligning with their threshold framework, contributing to multi-agency safeguarding, and supporting children placed by Northamptonshire authorities.
The Children's Homes Association
Sector membership body
The national membership body for providers of residential childcare across England and Wales - driving excellence in residential care through innovation, collaboration and sector leadership.
How we work together: Our CHA membership keeps us connected to the wider sector, gives us a voice in policy and regulatory dialogue, and ensures our practice is informed by the latest national learning and standards.
Dialogue
Leadership & training
One of the UK's leading specialist training, leadership development and consultancy organisations for children's homes, supported accommodation providers, local authorities and others working with vulnerable children - with over a decade of experience supporting thousands of settings, and peer communities for Responsible Individuals, Registered Managers and Regulation 44 visitors.
How we work together: We regularly commission Dialogue's management and leadership training so our leaders stay at the forefront of best practice, safeguarding, regulation, inspection readiness and sector developments. We are also proud to be working alongside Dialogue's Director on an emerging initiative to establish a new regional leadership forum for children's home leaders across the East and West Midlands - creating space for collaboration, shared learning, peer support and continuous improvement. We believe outcomes for children improve not only by developing our own organisation, but by strengthening leadership and professional learning across the whole sector.