How Many Children Are in Care in Nottingham?

650, That's how many children Nottingham City Council has in its care at any one time.

If you're reading this in Nottingham, that's roughly the size of a primary school. Every child in that school is living without the one thing most of us take for granted: a stable home that's permanent.

Across the wider Nottinghamshire area, that number climbs past 950.

To put that in perspective: as of March 2025, there are 81,770 children in care across England. That's 67 children per 10,000. The numbers have been rising steadily for years, peaking at 83,750 in 2023 before a slight dip.

But here's what the national numbers don't tell you.

How children get there.

In Nottinghamshire, 56% of children enter care because of abuse or neglect. Another 21% come in due to absent parenting: parents who, for whatever reason, cannot be there.

These aren't children who chose this. These are children who had no choice.

What happens after.

Once a child enters care, the system takes over. And the system, despite the best efforts of many dedicated social workers, is stretched thin.

58% of children in care in Nottinghamshire are placed in foster care. That number has been decreasing. More children are being placed in children's homes. Nationally, that figure rose 9% to 9,480 last year.

44% of children in care across England are placed outside their local authority boundary. That means nearly half are sent away from the area they know. Away from school. Away from friends. Away from everything familiar.

The outcomes.

This is where it gets hard to read.

In Nottinghamshire, 12.4% of children in care achieve good GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education, the exams most 16-year-olds in England sit) in English and Maths (grade 5 or above). The overall figure for every other child? 49.8%.

Four times more likely to miss that benchmark.

41% of 19 to 21-year-old care leavers in Nottinghamshire are NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). For their peers who didn't go through the care system, that figure is 11%.

Nearly four times more likely to be going nowhere.

Care leavers nationally are three times more likely to be NEET than other young people. That's not a Nottingham problem. That's a system problem.

Placement stability.

In 2024, 69% of children in care had one placement during the year. 10% experienced three or more placements in a single year.

Imagine being a teenager. Now imagine moving house three times in twelve months. New room. New carers. New school, maybe. New rules. New people trying to get to know you, and you trying to decide whether to let them.

This is one of the reasons 12 weeks shouldn't be a cliff edge. A programme that lasts 12 weeks and then disappears is another ending. For a child who's already had too many endings, another one isn't a programme finishing. It's just another person leaving.

Why we're writing about this.

Only Notts CIC exists because we believe music can reach young people who've learned to stop trusting adults. We run sessions in a studio where a young person can make a beat, write a verse, and say something they can't say in a room with a social worker and a form to fill in.

But we're also writing this because most people in Nottingham don't know there are 650 children in care in this city. They don't know what "looked after" actually means. They don't know that a child can be placed 50 miles from their school, or that 10% of children in care move three or more times in a year.

You should know this. Because these are children in your city. And the outcomes they're getting aren't their fault. They're the result of a system that's doing its best with what it has, and a society that doesn't talk about what happens to the children it's supposed to be looking after.

We're not asking you to do anything right now. We're just asking you to know.

Because once you know, you can't unknow it.

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Only Notts CIC is a trauma-informed music studio in Nottingham providing music sessions for children and young people in care.