Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 27 January 2023 to Question 127698 on Foster Care: Recruitment, whether her Department monitors overall numbers of active foster carers.

The department is closely monitoring the numbers of foster carers and recognises the urgency of action in placement sufficiency. The department published Stable Homes, Built on Love on 2 February 2023, this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/childrens-social-care-stable-homes-built-on-love.

The response to the independent care review can be found here: https://childrenssocialcare.independent-review.uk/.

This sets out a £27 million plan to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme so foster care is available for more children who need it.

Finances are often mentioned as a reason for foster carers deregistering. To alleviate this issue, we have increased the National Minimum Allowance by more than inflation to 12.43% this year.

The data on capacity and occupancy of foster places is published annually by Ofsted, with the latest data available at: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.publishing.service.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2Fuploads%2Fsystem%2Fuploads%2Fattachment_data%2Ffile%2F1115709%2FFostering_in_England_underlying_data_2022_-_FINAL__ODS_.ods&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK.