Foster Care: Recruitment and Retention

Alex Easton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered foster care recruitment and retention.

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I want to start by talking briefly about why this subject matters to me personally. By the time I was 18—I had left home—my parents had started fostering, and it has been in my mind since I first became interested in politics that, if I ever got to this place, I wanted to speak up about adoption and fostering. That is why the Minister often sees me opposite him in debates; it comes from my own personal experience.

I should declare an interest: until the local elections, I will be a member of Plymouth city council, which I will mention a little later. I have also been a very active corporate parent. When I became a councillor, I knew that there was a corporate parent panel, and I was particularly keen to be on it. I believe that, for elected representatives, the opportunity to be a corporate parent, whether at council or national level, is incredibly important, and I was able to act in that capacity as a councillor and I am here doing so as a Member of Parliament.

We desperately need to rebuild the foster care pipeline. Every year England loses more foster carers than it gains. We are facing a perfect storm, with more children in care, fewer foster carers and fewer people applying to become the next generation of foster carers. As of March 2025, there were 81,770 looked-after children in England, but the number of foster carers fell by 12% from 2021 to March 2025. In the last year alone, there were 1,140 fewer foster placements available for children in England than the year before. Spending on children’s social care continues to increase, yet councils are consistently exceeding their budgets. We need to do more to ensure that vulnerable children in care can access the stability that comes from being placed with loving foster parents. That involves two things: doing more to encourage people to become foster carers, and doing more to retain the brilliant carers we already have.

Carer shortages are a national issue, not a provider-specific one. Fragmented recruitment efforts are leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. That is why I broadly welcome the Government’s foster care reforms. I am encouraged by the commitment to simplify approval processes, strengthen regional collaboration and support innovation. However, it seems to me that there is a glaringly obvious omission: the need for better partnerships between local authorities and independent foster agencies.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. Does she agree that there should be greater recognition of foster carers as part of the professional team around the child, and that fully promoting a team-around-the-child model in which social workers, foster carers and therapists are regarded and treated as equal partners would enhance the experience and outcomes for children in care and, importantly, support the recruitment and retention of foster carers?

[Rebecca Smith]

It makes a huge amount of sense that foster carers are considered a key part of that process. I am sure that in certain parts of the country they are, but it sounds from the hon. Member’s question like there are other parts where some work is needed.

Independent fostering agencies are responsible for 44% of mainstream fostering households. They account for nearly 38,000 children in foster care in England. If their current growth continues, they have the potential to become the largest provider of fostering services.

When children enter the care system, they are first triaged by the local authority. If the local authority is not able to place a child in its own fostering service, it will ask an IFA to step in instead. That explains in part why IFAs overwhelmingly care for children with complex needs, including children with challenging behaviours, medical needs and those who have experienced numerous placement breakdowns. They also tend to be more successful at placing older children.

IFAs are more effective than local authorities at recruitment and retention, and less expensive, but they have been consistently overlooked by the Government. Ofsted reports consistently demonstrate that IFAs offer high-quality care to children, excellent support for foster carers and value for money for local authorities. Some 96% of IFAs are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted; by contrast, only 60% of local authorities were judged to be good or outstanding. Sixty-one per cent of IFA approvals are completed within six months, compared with only 41% of local authority approvals. However, until now, the Government have not properly acknowledged the growing contribution of IFAs and the vulnerable children who are impacted as a result.

The Government’s fostering policy paper launches regional care co-operatives, which will plan, deliver and commission homes for children at scale. However, the Government have failed to recognise the crucial role that IFAs play; instead, they seem to place them in direct competition with the new RCCs. IFAs already have experience in regionalisation, yet they are left out of all conversations. They are not sitting around the table with local authorities. I believe that is short-sighted and counterproductive. It is crucial that the Government engage with IFAs, along with local authorities, to better learn from their experience.

RCC decisions must be based on the best interests of the child and not simply the provider type. We need transparent placement protocols that include IFAs at every stage of consideration. RCCs should avoid blanket exclusions or prioritisation of local authority foster carers without due regard to individual need. It is about what is best for the child.

In my view, a mixed economy approach to foster care is the most efficient model and improves outcomes for vulnerable children. Compared with local authorities, IFAs are agile because they can respond more quickly, especially since they face less financial pressure. IFAs are also better at long-term planning. From my own experience in local government, I know that the relentless four-year election cycle—indeed, in Plymouth, we have elections every year for three years—hampers long-term strategic oversight for foster carers, whereas IFAs can consistently provide the care unhindered. Local authorities have so many other pressures on their time and resources, whereas IFAs can focus on doing one thing really well: providing consistent support tailored to a foster family’s needs.

Parents who use IFAs testify to the bespoke support that they provide. Janet has been a foster parent for 23 years and has cared for 11 children. Having previously adopted two boys, she saw the life-changing impact a stable home can offer. After experiencing a lack of support from a local authority, Janet transferred to the IFA that has supported them for the past 12 years. She says:

“I have 24/7 access to support from people who know me and my family. The conversations are open, honest and non-judgemental, and always centred on the children.”

Their IFA assures careful placement matching and treats carers as valued partners in the child’s care.

Ruth and Chris have a background in mental health services, so they are attuned to the way that trauma can shape a child’s life. They say:

“Foster children have often endured things they never should. Our motto is to drown them in love—it’s not just a job, it’s a way of life.”

Through their local IFA, they receive a vital support package, easy access to social workers, tailored training, and funding support for their children to do the activities they love. They say:

“If you call, you get help the same day. It’s personal, nurturing, and non-judgmental.”

Ruth and Chris’s local service has enabled them to work with the same psychologist for six years, which provides crucial continuity for their foster children. They contrast that with the poor communication they experienced when fostering via their local authority. One time they received files with such poor notes that they could not even tell which gender the children were.

All that being said, Plymouth city council is a success story of a local authority that is working really well. The council runs its own in-house fostering agency, Foster for Plymouth—in fact, it even gives out trolley tokens for people to carry around with them. It currently has 111 approved fostering households, which offer 234 placements for children. For context, Plymouth currently has a total of 525 children in its care, so that proportion is encouraging, and it is growing. The in-house agency provides significant value for money: it costs £571 per child per week, which is lower than the cost of IFAs, at more than £1,200 per week. However, this is an unusual situation; it is not replicated in many local authorities across the country. It is also, of course, far less expensive than the cost of residential care, at more than £9,400 a week.

Foster for Plymouth has built great relationships with local organisations, including Dartmoor zoo, in my constituency, and it regularly encourages businesses to offer discounts to foster carers. By offering a council tax exemption for foster carers, the council has seen 17 households sign up in the past year. It is also worth saying that we established a looked-after children covenant, because we recognised that if we wanted to ensure that the whole city was prioritising looked-after children and previously looked-after children, that was one way of doing it. I really believe Plymouth has some good practice here.

The council has also allocated a dedicated budget for carers who may need to do loft conversions and other home alterations to care for more children. I am sure the Minister has heard people mention that as a hindrance in the past. I think it is a really practical way of encouraging people to continue fostering. The council has developed a marketing campaign aimed specifically at people who have never considered fostering. In terms of wider collaboration, the council hosts an annual fostering summit and works closely with the Fostering South West hub.

A linked issue that I want to highlight is the postcode lottery when it comes to fostering fees, which are paid to foster carers in recognition of the skills and time involved in fostering. Although allowances for foster carers are set nationally, there is no legislation or guidance about fees, and that leads to wildly differing fee payments across the country. Shockingly, some foster carers receive £38,000 a year more than others, according to the Fostering Network, a national charity. In fact, some carers receive no fee, and many receive as little as £18 a week. Better remuneration for foster carers would help with both recruitment and retention and reflect their valuable contribution to society.