The latest Ofsted figures show we are losing more foster carers than we are gaining, leaving thousands of children without the stable, nurturing homes they need.
In March 2024, there were 57,065 foster carers – a 4% drop from the previous year. Only 11% of approved carers were brand new to fostering.
The nature of the sector has also changed. Local authority fostering numbers have declined by 15% since 2020, increasing reliance on independent agencies.
The needs of children in care are becoming more complex, requiring foster carers with the skills, support and resources to provide therapeutic, trauma-informed care. Yet we continue to lose experienced carers who feel undervalued, overburdened and unsupported.
Despite the best efforts of foster carers, social workers and service leaders, the system is buckling under the weight of growing demand and diminishing resources. We have known this for years. But time and again, we have responded with piecemeal reforms, pilot projects and short-term fixes rather than the bold, systemic change that is urgently needed.
For too long, we have treated foster care as a recruitment challenge, launching campaigns, slogans and advertisements in the hope of attracting new carers. But this approach isn't working – and it never will unless we first fix why carers are leaving.
The most effective recruitment strategy is better retention.
Foster carers themselves are the most powerful ambassadors for fostering. People step forward to foster because they hear from others how rewarding it can be. When foster carers feel respected, well-supported and secure, they encourage others to join. Until we address these core issues, no amount of recruitment marketing will solve the crisis.
Children in care do better when their foster carers feel valued, equipped and supported. If we fail to retain and empower foster carers, we fail the children who rely on the system for stability, belonging and care.
This is not a challenge that can be solved by goodwill alone. It requires structural change. We must move beyond rhetoric and confront the difficult trade-offs that have kept us locked in this cycle of decline.
So, what are the solutions? Here, I explore five options to reimagine a system that works for foster carers, social workers and, most importantly, for children.
1 MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO
Some foster carers, particularly those with strong peer networks and positive agency relationships, may argue that systemic change is unnecessary. They see fostering as a vocation rather than a profession and worry reform – especially professionalisation – could introduce bureaucracy that undermines the relational nature of care.
Foster care in England is in crisis. In our independent Review of Foster Care in England in 2017, Sir Martin Narey and I concluded that while carers want to be treated professionally, few identify as professionals. The Association of Directors of Children's Services has also cautioned against over-formalising fostering, fearing it could deter people from stepping forward.
There are existing efforts to improve support. For example, the Department for Education has introduced regional Fostering Recruitment and Support Hubs and expanded the Mockingbird model, which promotes peer support networks. These initiatives demonstrate targeted improvements can be made without radical reform.
However, maintaining the status quo does not address the core issues driving foster carers away. With recruitment continuing to fall, and retention worsening, is standing still a viable option?
2 PROFESSIONALISE
There are growing calls to professionalise foster care – partially and fully – elevating carers to a status akin to other children's services professionals. This could mean salaried employment, providing carers with financial stability, pensions and other protections.
Foster carers would benefit from standardised contracts, enabling them to move between agencies or local authorities without restarting approval.
It could mean stronger representation in decision-making, improved training and professional development and a fairer allegations process, preventing carers from losing income or being sidelined without due process.
Professionalisation would mean increased status and recognition for foster carers – acknowledging them as experts not just “placement providers”. It should improve recruitment and retention and encourage a wider pool of carers to commit to fostering.
Other benefits include greater financial security, making fostering a viable long-term career rather than a precarious role, and better outcomes for children due to more stable, well-supported placements.
However, concerns remain. Some fear that professionalisation could erode the family-based model, replacing relational care with rigid contracts and performance targets. Others worry that added regulation and oversight could make fostering less accessible.
Could this be the radical transformation fostering needs? Or would it create a new set of unintended consequences?
3 BETTER SUPPORT
Rather than professionalisation, another approach is to radically strengthen support systems, ensuring foster carers receive the practical, emotional and financial backing they need.
This means better support from supervising social workers, more practical help such as rapid access to specialist services, stronger school placement support and improved multi-agency working.
Foster carers should have access to independent support during allegations as well as faster investigations, clearer policies and legal protection.
Better support would mean a stronger voice for carers with routine inclusion in care planning, direct communication with decision-makers and recognition as key team members.
And finally, it would require a more reliable financial model that could include retainer payments for carers without a current placement, fairer allowances countrywide and better support for complex placements.
Would this be enough? Strengthening support would not require the full professionalisation of fostering but it demands serious investment in social work teams, financial frameworks and multi-agency collaboration.
4 IMPROVE RELATIONSHIPS
Foster carers and social workers share a common goal – ensuring children feel safe, loved and have a sense of belonging. Yet systemic pressures often create tensions rather than create partnerships.
Foster carers report feeling under intense scrutiny rather than trusted as partners in care. Meanwhile, children's social workers feel constrained by bureaucratic processes that limit their ability to build genuine relationships with foster families.
Statutory oversight is essential for safeguarding but the way it is delivered can sometimes erode trust instead of building it. Too often, risk aversion leads to heavy-handed compliance, creating an adversarial dynamic rather than a collaborative culture of shared responsibility.
If we want more foster carers to stay in the role – and to encourage others to join – we must find a way to balance oversight with empowerment.
This means giving frontline workers the trust, freedom and resources to support foster carers relationally, rather than through rigid processes.
It is also about valuing foster carers, ensuring day-to-day interactions are built on partnership, not suspicion and encouraging safe innovation, allowing local authorities and fostering agencies to try new approaches to support carers without fear of punitive inspection outcomes.
If we are serious about improving retention, we need real-time, meaningful ways to listen to foster carers and social workers. This could include regular, strengths-based feedback to understand what helps or hinders carers.
There should be more opportunities for open dialogue between foster carers, social workers and decision-makers. Crucially, the impact of changes should be tracked over time to ensure policies genuinely improve relationships and support.
5 LEGAL REFORM
Regulation is essential for safeguarding children but when it becomes overly risk-averse, it can stifle innovation and improvement. Right now, providers who try to do things differently – even in ways that are compliant with regulations – are often penalised rather than encouraged.
At a time when we desperately need safe innovation, fostering providers are too fearful to take risks because they know the regulator may not support them.
This creates a cycle of stagnation, where providers stick to the same old responses, even when they know they aren't working.
The solution must come from government and regulatory leadership. We need clear guidance that encourages providers to trial new approaches without fear of punitive inspection outcomes.
We also need a regulatory culture shift – inspectors who understand and recognise innovative practice rather than defaulting to traditional models – and regulations that enable flexibility while maintaining high standards of care.
If we want better outcomes for children and care leavers, we must be brave enough to allow new ways of working to flourish.
TIPS: SIX WAYS TO BOOST FOSTER CARER RECRUITMENT
By Sarah Thomas, chief executive, The Fostering Network
Good foster carers can make a huge difference in the life of a child by providing them with a safe, stable and loving home so that they can thrive. It is vital that fostering services are recruiting and retaining the best foster carers to achieve the best outcomes for children.
1 Identify the gaps in your foster carer community. Start by finding out who is, and isn't, in your fostering community. Develop an understanding of the needs of the children who require a foster family in your area, particularly those who haven't had their needs met such as those who have been placed in residential care when they require a local family environment. Taking a deep dive into the needs of the children and young people who you have not been able to match well will help you identify the gaps and create a targeted, inclusive recruitment strategy.
2 Build a strong marketing strategy. Marketing strategies for foster carer recruitment need to resonate with potential foster carers so they can see themselves in a fostering role. Start by involving young people and foster carers in the creation of marketing materials by holding focus groups or workshops to gain their views and ensure the messaging lands well.
Tailor your marketing to meet the unique needs of your local area. Use images that accurately depict children in foster care and the diversity of cultural backgrounds so realistic expectations are set for potential foster carers.
Avoid using financial incentives in marketing campaigns. Instead focus on the rewards of fostering, such as supporting a child and personal fulfilment. Ensure you have the substance in place to back up any claims. If you say you offer good support and expertise in fostering, make sure this is the reality for the applicant from the moment they make contact. If the call is answered by someone without expertise, who cannot provide authentic answers to questions or has to say they will get back to them, they will not feel you are delivering and will move on.
3 Streamline the enquiry and application process. A prospective foster carer's first enquiry is one of the most critical points of their application journey. However, all too often they are met with an overly complex and repetitive process, resulting in them pulling out altogether.
Test out your enquiry process by putting yourself in the shoes of an applicant and calling your enquiry line. Who answers and how quickly? How long before they can come out to visit? Is it the same person on the initial call and the home visit or does the applicant have to start a new relationship all over again?
Use the home visit as the opportunity to gather everything you require and remove the additional ask of completing an application form. Services who do this see significant improvements in conversion rates. Applicants are likely to arrange visits from a variety of organisations to ensure they make an informed decision so if you make the process as streamlined as possible you will stand out as the efficient, customer-focused service.
4 Nurture relationships with prospective foster carers. Maintaining a strong, supportive relationship with a prospective foster carer should always be at the heart of recruitment and retention. When prospective foster carers are responded to promptly in the early stages of the recruitment process, they're less likely to drop out.
Ensuring the team is centred around providing the most efficient and consistent service for prospective foster carers is essential. Limiting the number of social workers a prospective foster carer works with is central to this, allowing them to build trusting relationships with a key social worker and limiting bureaucracy.
Responsiveness is crucial. Automatically acknowledge receipt of enquiries within minutes using an auto-response system and include a warm, welcoming message telling them their enquiry has been received. Then follow up within 24 hours if possible – reflecting the level of care and attention applicants can expect throughout the process.
5 Be flexible, transparent and supportive. Fostering services should be working towards a more efficient, transparent and supportive recruitment process for potential foster carers. This should include enquiry lines staffed out of hours, flexible home visit scheduling for applicants, recognising that they may be working and prefer evening or weekend visits. Flexibility ensures the best chance of everyone in the household being around, helping to gain a crucial understanding of the household dynamics.
Foster carers can drop out of the application process when they realise the complexity and intensity of fostering, which often they don't find out until late in the recruitment process. It is vital that applicants are given enough information early on and messaging in marketing materials is authentic so they know what to expect from the outset.
6 Embed quality improvement into everything you do. Retention is the key to successful recruitment. It is critical to ensure you build quality improvement mechanisms into everything that you do in your fostering service. Monitoring quality creates consistency and leads to improved outcomes for everyone.
Build in regular secret shopper exercises to your enquiry process and develop a feedback process for applicants at all stages. Ask foster carers to rate the quality of the service, what is working well and what could be improved and, most importantly, respond to the feedback by making improvements.
HERTFORDSHIRE: PUTTING CARERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Nest scheme helps children move from residential care
Hertfordshire County Council has 315 mainstream foster carers and 116 kinship carers.
It is currently running two recruitment campaigns, both informed by the success of an emergency foster care scheme that started in October 2022. The scheme has six dedicated emergency foster carers.
“Most of the children in this scheme are new into care,” says fostering and adoption service manager Grete Lund. “They're placed in emergency situations, sometimes under police protection, for 10 to 14 days. This allows time for the crisis to calm and the team around the child to look at what the next step is.”
The scheme means the council doesn't have to make ad hoc foster arrangements at short notice. Instead, it has a small team of appropriately resourced foster carers who can take placements immediately. Since its inception, 150 children have been supported, of which 21% later returned to live with their families.
Lund says the authority learned two key lessons from the scheme. First, the powerful role foster carers can play in the recruitment process. The six carers in the scheme were recruited internally from the council's existing foster carers.
“Initially, we had just one carer for six months,” says Lund. “But this carer was doing well and talking about the role, and we started to get interest from other carers. It showed us that when a role is new, it takes time for people to understand it and that foster carers are very effective at spreading the word.”
Second, the scheme highlighted the benefits of having specific foster carers for different roles.
The county council is now recruiting carers for a new scheme, Nest (Nurture, Empathy and Supportive Transitions). This aims to provide foster homes for children in residential care who would benefit from transitioning to a family environment.
The authority hopes to draw on its internal carer support systems for recruitment, including its nine Mockingbird Hubs – groups of up to 10 foster families who provide support and advice to each other. An external advertising campaign is also in progress, promoting Nest on social media and in specialist publications that target people who work with children in a professional capacity.
Hertfordshire is raising public awareness of fostering with its Help campaign, launching in Foster Care Fortnight from 12-25 May, which features the personal experiences of foster carers.
By Bronwyn Bidwell
NATIONWIDE: CHARITY ACTS FAST ON INITIAL ENQUIRIES
Tact Fostering is the UK's largest dedicated fostering charity and has looked after more than 8,000 children since it was founded in 1993.
Its mission, according to chief executive officer Andy Elvin, is “to be an exemplar of what the care system could and should be like”.
Tact (The Adolescent and Children's Trust) currently works with 450 foster families and 550 children and young people in England, Scotland and Wales.
The charity has seen a drop in active foster carers in line with national trends. Elvin attributes this to the cost-of-living crisis and the rise in young adults living at home for longer meaning there are fewer empty nesters with spare rooms. Demographics are also an issue.
“Many of our carers are 60 plus,” explains Elvin. “When children leave the foster home, carers re-assess and ask themselves ‘Do I want to do this for another six or eight years, or have I done my time?’.”
To boost recruitment, the charity has a dedicated digital team to promote fostering on social media. Google ads and Instagram have proved to be the most effective ways of reaching people. The team also promotes fostering at community events.
“We also ask carers or staff to refer prospective new carers,” says Elvin. “We tend to get very good quality people through our refer-a-friend scheme.”
When a prospective carer makes contact, the charity moves quickly. “On that initial call, we deal with the red line stuff – obvious things like: ‘Do you have a spare room?’ – and then get an initial visit in the diary,” says Elvin. “Within five working days, one of our social workers will be sitting in their front room talking to them about fostering.”
Tact also places a strong emphasis on retention with rates above the national average and provides a range of services to prevent carers from feeling isolated.
It runs a 24/7 support service and provides specialised health and education services.
“We get a lot of positive feedback from our carers about our education service,” says Elvin. “We really go into bat for children. We hold schools to account, especially when it comes to using off-rolling or fixed-term exclusions as a way of behaviour management.”
To boost overall foster care numbers, Elvin wants to see the government run a national campaign. Tact foster carer Carol with her family
“If you watch TV, you'll see ads asking you to be a probation officer, prison officer, teacher or adult social care professional,” he says. “Why don't they do it for foster carers?”
By Bronwyn Bidwell
MANCHESTER: INCREASING CAPACITY THROUGH FUNDING
The Room Makers scheme, launched by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) in 2022, has increased fostering capacity in the region and had a real impact on carer satisfaction and retention.
With funding from the Greater Manchester Investment Fund, GMCA gave grants to 26 foster carers willing to foster an additional child subject to space. Carers spent on average £3,500 each transforming spare rooms in their homes into bedrooms to accommodate foster children.
“We had a really good response,” says Allan Madeley, Greater Manchester Regional Care Co-operative Pathfinder Programme lead. “What we wanted to do next was broaden the profile of who we could support.”
The second iteration of Room Makers started in October 2024 after the authority was chosen to become a Regional Care Co-operative Pathfinder. GMCA used £500,000 from its pathfinder capital grant to re-run Room Makers.
“The first iteration of the scheme was for carers who already had a room in their property that, with a bit of TLC, could be turned into a bedroom,” says Madeley. “We capped grants at £5,000 but most projects were well under that. The second time round, we didn't include the cap. This enabled carers to consider a loft or garage conversion, single-storey extension or building a garden room.”
Room Makers round two helped 32 families and increased placements by 43 as some projects created rooms large enough for siblings to share.
“The costs per job were higher because the work involved was more complicated and came in at about £11,500 per placement,” says Madeley. “But think what you save with a local authority placement. You also build capacity, keep siblings together, and it keeps children in the area.”
Madeley says the key to Room Maker's success was its simplicity. Carers who apply for the programme are assessed “not just on bricks and mortar but also on their readiness to take on another child”.
If carers pass the assessment, an agreement is signed, and they can get on with the project. “We trust carers and give them the power to oversee the work – and our carers value that,” says Madeley. “It's had a real impact on satisfaction and retention. Carers feel we are quite literally investing in them.”
By Bronwyn Bidwell
