Our impact

In 2007, after 30 years of campaigning for foster carers to be fairly reimbursed for the extra costs involved in raising a child in foster care, the Government agreed to pay minimum allowances in England. National Minimum Allowances shortly followed in Northern Ireland and Wales. 

In August 2023, after over a decade of campaigning, the Scottish Government announced a Scottish Recommended Allowance for foster carers and kinship carers.  

Every year we conduct a UK-wide survey of the allowances local authorities are providing to their foster carers to alert those fostering services who appear to be paying below the national rates where applicable. Over the years, we have successfully influenced fostering services to bring their allowances in line with the national minimum. This is work we are continuing to campaign on. 

We will also continue to campaign for our recommended allowance rates to cover the full cost of caring for a child and supporting them to thrive in foster care. Camden Council have announced that they will be raising their foster carer allowances to meet, and in some places exceed, our recommended rates from the 1st April 2024. 

A petition calling for fairer allowances and taxes for foster carers was discussed in a debate in Westminster on Monday 15 January 2024, led by Martyn Day, MP for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, Scottish National Party. We met with Martyn Day ahead of the event to brief him and sent a briefing outlining our key calls to all MPs.  

It was great to have support from several MPs, including the Children’s Minster and the Shadow Children’s Minister. They highlighted important issues raised by The Fostering Network, including the postcode lottery of foster carer allowances across the country and insufficient amounts for additional payments.  

This debate was held after a 6.88 per cent above inflation uplift in the national minimum allowance was announced in England in December. The Children’s Minister confirmed that the uplift was fully funded, and the government is going to consider regulating how local authorities meet the minimum allowance. 

Foster carers will be exempt from Making Tax Digital (MTD), a new digital tax system that HMRC are introducing for the self-employed this year. The decision follows two years of campaigning from The Fostering Network and our tax advisers, Xeinadin Group Limited. 

Under the new plan, foster carers would have had to send in quarterly tax returns (as well as annual returns) and use 'compatible software' to do all their tax administration online. Surveys from our members highlighted serious concerns regarding the additional burden and cost this would place on both foster carers and services. 

Last year, we lobbied HMRC to make the case that foster carers should not be included in this change. We also wrote to the Minister and asked our supporters to write to their elected representatives. 

For several years, The Fostering Network has been calling on governments across the UK to review children’s social care to ensure that children and young people in care are receiving the support they need to thrive.  

There have since been independent reviews of children’s social care across the UK looking at how the needs of children and young people in care are being met, where there are gaps, and where there is a need for future investment and development.  

In England, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care was launched in 2021. Josh MacAlister concluded this review in May 2022 and the Government published their strategy response 'Stable Homes, Built on Love' at the beginning of February 2023. We have published a blog one year on looking at the progress made so far and what still needs to be achieved. The Government’s strategy committed to increased investment, the rollout of Mockingbird across the country and a nationwide recruitment and retention strategy. 

See more information on how we responded to the review and the Government’s strategy. 

In Northern Ireland, the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care Services was announced in 2022 and published in June 2023. The review was led by Professor Ray Jones and the final report has set out a plan to transform children’s services through a whole scale reconfiguration of children’s trusts and the creation of a new Northern Ireland wide independent agency. See more information on the review and how we were involved in the process and continue to be involved in its implementation. 

In Scotland, the First Minister commissioned the Independent Care Review in 2016 and, between February 2017 and February 2020, the Care Review worked to figure out how to improve the lives of the children in Scotland. This review culminated in the publication of several reports in 2020, the main volume of which was The Promise. The Promise focuses specifically on the needs of care experienced children and young people and outlines over 80 specific changes that must be made to transform how Scotland cares so that all children grow up loved, safe and respected. 

See more information on how we responded to the review and our engagement with The Promise.

As part of the Government’s Stable Homes Built on Love Strategy, the Department for Education (DfE) is aiming to roll out Mockingbird across England. The DfE is aiming for 200 Mockingbird constellations to be in place across England by 2025, after funding 97 new constellations as part of the recruitment and retention clusters.  

These will strengthen peer support, learning and development and community-based care for more families across England. Each cluster will have a Mockingbird constellation if they don’t already. We are really pleased to see this level of investment into Mockingbird, making England the leading provider of the programme. There is a lot of evidence that demonstrates that participation in a Mockingbird constellation improves the retention of foster carers and the wellbeing of care experienced children and young people.     

Our Mockingbird team is continuing to work alongside the government’s recruitment and retention programme to explore new innovations to strengthen the implementation and sustainability of Mockingbird. 

In Autumn 2019, the Department for Education in Westminster announced an additional £10 million of funding for Staying Put. Since the policy was introduced, The Fostering Network has been campaigning for it to be properly costed and fully funded. 

A year before the announcement, we published Staying Put: An Unfulfilled Promise in which we identified the issues preventing young people from remaining with their former foster carers and benefiting from the continued relationships, stability and support they need when turning 18. One of the major issues was funding, and we were pleased that the Government listened to our calls and provided significant additional funding for Staying Put in 2020/21. 

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, we worked with government officials, other organisations, and charities within the sector to advise and influence decision making. We ensured that foster carers were receiving the support they needed to continue to provide the best care possible for children and young people during this challenging time. 

Priority access to vaccinations

During the pandemic, foster carers across the UK were continuing to fulfil their critical role looking after the children and young people in their care. They were exposed to multiple households in their fostering role which increased the risk of contracting the virus. 

Many of you joined our call for foster carers to be prioritised in the coronavirus vaccine roll out by writing to your elected representatives and 3,894 letters were written in total.   

We were delighted that in Northern Ireland, all foster carers (which includes kinship carers) were eligible for the vaccine as part of the social care workforce in priority group two.   

In Wales, foster carers were prioritised for vaccinations in two stages, notwithstanding an element of local consideration in recognition of the need to ensure local foster care arrangements.   

The campaign for foster carers to have priority access to vaccinations continues in England and Scotland. Some local authorities have acted on the calls of over 3,000 letters which have been sent to MPs across the two nations, but this access has not been rolled out nationally. 

Key worker status 

The UK Government's definition of social care workers states that it 'includes but is not limited to:... social workers, care workers, and other frontline social care staff including volunteers; and, the support and specialist staff required to maintain the UK’s social care sector.' 

In recognition of the fact that foster carers are caring for some of our most vulnerable children during this time of crisis - maintaining relationships, providing stable family homes and keeping children safe – we believe that this important role should be been recognised as being on the frontline of social care along with social workers, caring for children on behalf of the state. As such, we believe foster carers fall within this Government definition and should be classed as social care workers.

In Wales, foster carers are entitled to a social care worker card which grants them key worker status. Fostering service managers should have received an email from Social Care Wales about how to get the card to unregistered social care workers. See the Social Care Wales’ website for further information about the social care worker cards. 

We are continuing to campaign for all foster carers in the UK to be considered key workers during the crisis so they can access essential items, be eligible for testing and have priority access to the vaccine.  

Foster carer finances 

The Fostering Network had queries from foster carers concerned about their fostering finances during the Covid-19 crisis. These fell into three groups: 

1. Those foster carers with coronavirus who, temporarily can no longer care for their fostered child(ren); 

2. Those who have to self-isolate for 12 weeks because they are in the very vulnerable category; 

3. Respite foster carers who are unable to offer respite placements because of the social distancing requirements. 

The Fostering Network were calling for foster carers who fall under these categories to be paid a retainer by their fostering service to ensure consistency of financial support.  

We urged all UK Governments to explore the provision of an increase in the level of financial support given to foster carers to consider these additional duties. 

Statutory instrument amendments in England 

In 2020, The Fostering Network challenged the Children’s Minister on behalf of The Alliance for Children in Care and Care Leavers to express concern about temporary changes to The Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, which made unprecedented changes to regulations relating to the care and protection of vulnerable children and young people. 

Later that year, there was a court case into the changes to the amendments which addressed whether they were made unlawfully or not.   

The High Court found that the Department of Education acted lawfully. The court found that the changes were rushed through but that this was justified by the exceptional circumstances. The judge said that in any other circumstances she would have been 'minded to find that the consultation was not lawful if the Commissioner was not consulted'.  

On 25 November, the Court of Appeal's ruling found that it was unlawful for the Secretary of State for Education to bypass the Children's Commissioner, as well as other bodies representing the rights and interests of children and young people in care. This marked an important victory for children's rights in England.