The Mockingbird Programme

Mockingbird, a global award winning and pioneering programme led by The Fostering Network in the UK, delivers sustainable foster care.   

It is an evidence-based model structured around the support and relationships an extended family provides. The model nurtures the relationships between children, young people and foster families supporting them to build a resilient and caring community of six to ten satellite families called a constellation.  

We work with local authorities, fostering services, children’s services trusts and independent fostering providers across the UK to deliver this innovative programme, improving foster care and outcomes for children and young people in foster care.  

For more information about the Mockingbird programme contact the Mockingbird team.

For media enquiries regarding the Mockingbird programme, please email The Fostering Network's media team or phone 020 7620 6441.  

Objectives of the programme

The main objectives of the Mockingbird programme are to: 

• deliver sustainable foster care by replicating the extended family model offering support and relationships
• nurture the relationships between children, young people and foster families, supporting them to build a resilient and caring community
• build a constellation community that offers vital peer support and guidance alongside social activities and sleepovers to strengthen relationships and permanence. 

The Mockingbird Programme: a global family  

The Mockingbird Family Model™ originated in Seattle and was developed by the Mockingbird Society. It is delivered by The Fostering Network under license in the UK.   

The model is now being delivered and implemented in the USA and the UK, in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and we continue to work closely with our partners to share practice and create a network of global connections.    

Mockingbird build communities of six to ten foster families called constellations. Each constellation is led by a hub home carer and liaison worker. The constellation offers vital peer support and guidance alongside social activities and sleepovers to strengthen relationships and permanence. 

For more information about Mockingbird: 

• Read stories from our constellation communities 
• Watch our short film to hear how Mockingbird families supported each other during lockdown. 
• Mockingbird: A really big family - Hear from young people about their experience of being part of a constellation. This film was co-produced in 2021 with young people who are part of Mockingbird in the UK.  

What is a constellation? 

Relationships are central to Mockingbird.   

The hub home carer builds strong relationships with everyone in the constellation. This empowers families to support each other and overcome problems before they escalate or lead to placement breakdown, which increases protective factors around the children and young people.  

Seventy-eight percent of young people who are part of constellations are in mainstream fostering placements. However, Mockingbird has huge flexibility to support children and young people at all stages of their journey through care. Constellations have included young people in kinship care and special guardianship orders, adoptive families, children and their key workers from residential care, parent and child placements and young people under staying put and shared lives arrangements.   

Being able to support a diversity of placement types has met the needs of different care-experienced populations and embraces the ethos of the model with child-centred practice, maintaining relationships, emphasising an extended family network, and reducing bureaucracy. The model also offers supportive peer relationships for children of foster carers.   

The Mockingbird constellation also builds links with other families and individuals important to the children’s care plans and to resources in the wider community which can provide them with enhanced opportunities to learn, develop and succeed. 

Impact of the programme

The Fostering Network gathers monthly monitoring data from all active sites. Independent evaluation of Mockingbird published by the Department for Education found the programme to be a cost-effective, sustainable model of foster care, with more capacity to care for children and young people than other existing fostering models.  

Learn more about the impact and growth of the Mockingbird programme in our various reports. 

2024 Impact Report

2022 Impact Report Welsh Translation

2021 Programme Update

2020 DfE Independent evaluation