Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when she plans to respond to the Fourth Report of Session 2024-25 of the Education Committee, Children’s Social Care, published on 10 July 2025, HC 430; and whether she plans to accept the recommendation on the development of a national foster care strategy.

The department responded to the Fourth Report of the Session 2024-25 of the Education Committee, Children’s Social Care in September 2025. This includes our response to recommendation 29: ‘The Department for Education must put in place a national fostering strategy to complement the existing strategies for adoption and kinship care. As part of this, it should consult on introducing a national register of foster carers and review the financial support available to ensure that it is adequate to meet their needs.’

Foster care is one of my top priorities as Minister for Children and Families, and we need to go further and faster with recruiting and retaining more carers. We are prioritising fostering in our reform of children’s social care, as demonstrated by the announcement of an additional £40 million investment over this financial year and the next two financial years. This will bring benefits to thousands of fostered children. We will set out more detail on our planned investments and reforms for fostering in due course.

The Education Select Committee published the findings on 17 October 2025, the findings can be found here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/49799/documents/266904/default/.