WRITTEN EVIDENCE SUBMITTED BY NATIONWIDE ASSOCIATION OF FOSTERING PROVIDERS

(CSC0029)

Introduction

1. This submission relates to the role of independent fostering agencies in protecting the rights of children in care.

2. IFAs account for 44% of (mainstream, i.e. non-kinship) foster carers in England, in turn these foster carers care for 48% of children who reside in foster care.[1]

3. Ofsted have judged 96% of IFAs to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in 2023-24[2]

4. IFAs have historically and continue to now, provide care for young people with some of the highest levels of needs.[3]

Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP)

5. NAFP is a non for profit organisation that was established in 2008. Our members care for 97% of children living with IFA foster carers. Members include independent and voluntary sector fostering agencies, from large national providers to small local agencies. We are a campaigning organisation that pulls together the wealth of expertise and knowledge of the fostering sector to ensure that fostering continues to provide children with the best outcomes.

6. NAFP supports IFAs in their work to recruit and support fostering families who care for children with complex needs in a dynamic environment. We continue to focus on high standards of practice with forums, seminars and group work. We promote strong partnership relationships with local authorities both in terms of commissioning and practice. We seek to influence legal, policy and practice standards with regulators and governments across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Human Rights Act and IFAs - Legal framework

Article 8 – the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence

7. Fostering agencies provide rigorous safeguarding and trauma-informed support to fostering households who, in turn, offer stability, consistency and trusted relationships to children and young people as part of a family unit. With the use of a skilled matching process,  foster carers help children develop in confidence and esteem, and encourage aspiration and success.  Young people thrive within fostering families and the relationships can last long into adulthood.  

Accommodation

8. Fostering agencies provide a wide range of fostering households with trauma-informed training and support, education provision, activities and mentoring that goes to support some of the most complex children and young people.

9. The success of an arrangement is in part the skill of the matching process; ensuring that carers have the skill, knowledge and expertise to care for the individual needs, wishes and feelings of the child. IFA’s contribute to the success of the arrangement with professional expertise of the team around the foster carer, and tailoring this package of support in response to the needs of the complete fostering family.

10. Strong commissioning of fostering arrangements involves an informed collaboration across agencies and local authorities, ensuring procurement is shaped by partnership, prioritising quality and stability of fostering placements, balances value for money and continuously improves through data and feedback.

Concerns

11. The social care work force is vastly under-resourced especially within local authorities. Our members are woefully aware of how stretched children's social workers can be at times. This, undoubtedly, has a negative impact on the partnership work that is imperative to providing good outcomes for children in fostering families. Foster care arrangements are increasingly sourced in an emergency with unacceptable time restraints. Referrals sent to IFA’s are inadequately reflecting the needs nor capturing the views of children. The result of this only leads to poorly matched and unsustainable arrangements, with catastrophic outcomes for children in care.

12. The social care system is vastly underfunded, and as such, decisions around costs of placements can, at times, be the main factor, rather than the needs of the child and the right to a family life.  Examples of this include prioritising a local poorly matched placement over a well matched IFA carer; moving settled children to a local authority fostering placement to save money; lack of financial support for staying put arrangements.

13. There is a national shortage of foster carers to meet the needs of those children being referred to foster care. This is a multifaceted issue, both with existing foster carers resigning and a lack of new suitable fostering households being recruited. The government strategy to recruit new carers for local authorities has missed the opportunity to offer prospective foster carers a choice of which fostering service they wish to connect with, including local authority fostering services and IFAs. This will encourage more enquirers to move forward in the assessment process and support retention through better matching of enquirers and fostering services from the start.

14. Children and young people are not often included at key decision points during the matching process, which ultimately impacts on the strength of the arrangement. It is helpful to include:
1. Where do they want to live?
2. What do they want from a family, including environment, location, activities, pets?
3. If there is a choice of arrangements, are they part of it?

15. The input of previous care givers is also important in finding the best arrangement for a child, they can often know the child better than the professional network. This is not always captured in the referral and vital information missed leading to recurrent placement breakdown.

16. The commissioning and procurement of fostering arrangements is too often bureaucratic and ineffective. There are commissioning processes that prioritise price over the needs of children, using a methodology that groups children into sets (for the purposes of the tendering process) that works against meeting the needs of individual children.

Recommendations:

17. Government should create and implement a dedicated foster care strategy to ensure that the right to family life can be made a reality for all children living in foster care.

18. A government-led national fostering recruitment campaign to provide more consistent messaging and timing to prospective foster carers to ensure that children have a choice of which fostering family is right for them.

19. Meaningful change in the commissioning of fostering services – implementing cost-saving for local authorities through a significantly less bureaucratic mechanism that benefits from ‘light touch’, prioritising the ‘most appropriate placement‘ for children.

(Aug 2025)