Children's minister Josh MacAlister has promised "major changes" to England's fostering system, backed by "tens of millions of pounds" in funding.
He said he would be soon be bringing forward "a comprehensive set of measures" to "boost the numbers of foster carers and the types of foster care that children need", adding that it was a "personal priority" for him as minister.
MacAlister's comments, made in a parliamentary debate last week, followed his recent call for children in care to have a choice of where and with whom they lived, enabled by a surge in foster care recruitment.
Declining number of foster families
This would entail a complete reversal of the decline in the number of mainstream foster care households seen in recent years, with Ofsted figures showing a 10% drop from 2021-24, when there were 33,745 approved families.
Last week's parliamentary debate was focused on the education select committee's recent report on children's social care, which, quoting Fostering Network figures, said England had a shortage of 6,500 fostering families.
It called on the Department for Education (DfE) to produce a national fostering strategy, consult on a national register of carers - to improve matching and raise carer status - and review allowance levels.
In response to the report, the DfE did not comment on the call for a fostering strategy and said it was weighing up the costs and benefits of a register.
In 2023-24, councils and independent fostering agencies (IFAs) recruited 3,785 fostering households who were still active at the end of the year, down from 4,630 in 2019-20.
Actions to boost fostering recruitment and retention
Government policy to tackle this, under Labour and its Conservative predecessor, has been focused on the rollout of regional fostering recruitment hubs, which provide an information and support service to help prospective carers from their initial enquiry to making an application.
The DfE has provided £15m this year to complete their rollout across all local authorities.
At the same time, to boost retention, it has sought to expand the use of the ‘Mockingbird model’, developed by the Fostering Network in the UK, under which “constellations” of fostering households provide mutual support to one another, led by an experienced carer who provides a ‘hub home’ for the others.
A 2020 evaluation of the scheme for the DfE found that households who participated in Mockingbird were 82% less likely to deregister than households who did not.
Fostering funding pledges
In addition, it has committed:
- £25m from 2026-28 to recruit a further 400 fostering households.
- A share of £560m in capital funding from 2026-29 to boosting fostering provision, including by enabling carers to extend their homes to accommodate more children.
It is not clear whether the "tens of millions of pounds" referred to by MacAlister in last week's parliamentary debate goes beyond this.
He told fellow MPs that the upcoming reforms would be based around regional fostering hubs and regional care co-operatives (RCCs), which involve local authorities coming together to commission and provide care placements collectively.
RCCs are being tested in the South East and Greater Manchester, though the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is just completing its passage through Parliament, would enable the government to direct their rollout across England.
Concerns over care placements for teenagers
The education select committee's report also raised concerns about the placement of 16- and 17-year-old children in care in supported accommodation, which was introduced in 2023 to replace previously unregulated semi-independent provision.
While supported accommodation is regulated, this is against lighter-touch standards than those that apply to children's homes, and do not require that a young person is offered care, a situation heavily criticised by children's charities and the Children's Commissioner for England.
Ofsted, meanwhile, has warned that a "worrying" number of children are being wrongly placed in supported accommodation, being “clearly in need of a higher level of care" than the provision was equipped to provide.
MacAlister's previous call for universal care standards
In his 2021-22 Independent Review of Children's Social Care, carried out for the previous government, MacAlister said "all children in care should live in a home where they receive care".
He called for the government to develop new care standards that applied to all homes where children lived, and that could be implemented flexibly. However, the recommendation was not accepted by either the Conservative government or its Labour successor.
In its social care report, the education select committee called for MacAlister's 2022 recommendation on universal standards to be adopted, to ensure all children receive care.
However, in response, the DfE said it would not prioritise the idea, adding that it was instead focused on updating "some of the most outdated national minimum standards", which apply to specific provision types, "to ensure they reflect the latest ambitious goals we have for children".
Minister 'understands case for universal standards'
In last week's parliamentary debate, select committee chair Helen Hayes urged MacAlister to look again at introducing universal standards.
In response, he said he "[understood] the case made for a fresh, universal set of care standards that are more intuitive and that allow us to regulate and set packages of care around children, regardless of where they live, while they are in the care of the state".
He added that he would "continue to look at opportunities to improve care standards". However, MacAlister stressed that, while some children had felt "abandoned" because of the accommodation they were placed in at 16 or 17, other older teenagers did not want the type of children's home care they received at age 11 or 12.
"We must design care standards that work for the whole population," he said.
