Established in 2014 and conducted every three years, our State of the Nations' Foster Care surveys are the largest and most comprehensive of the UK's fostering sector. We survey foster carers, fostering services, and for the first time this year, former foster carers and non-members.
Our 2024 State of the Nations survey has now closed and we are working hard on analysing all your responses. We will publish the key findings by the end of the year.
Look out for our 2024 State of the Nations survey findings
Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to our 2024 State of the Nations survey. We’re thrilled to have heard from more than 3,000 foster carers, former foster carers, and fostering services.
We’ll be using the findings to campaign for change with the new government and will be publishing a report with the key findings later this year.
Sign up to our campaigners mailing list to make sure you hear when the report is published, or follow us on X, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. You can also check this page for updates.
Read our last State of the Nation's Foster Care report from 2021 here
2021 was the fourth time we conducted our State of the Nation survey. We also surveyed our fostering service members for the first time, enabling us to gain a deeper insight into the challenges within the system and how they impact on overall service.
The 2021 survey covered key practice and workforce issues such as placement stability, training and support for carers, and status and authority of the workforce. In total, 3,352 foster carers and 99 fostering services took the survey, maintaining its position as the largest and most comprehensive survey of fostering in the UK.
Note: before 2024, we called this survey the "State of the Nation's Foster Care survey" (or "State of the Nation survey" for short). In 2024 we changed this to the "State of the Nations' Foster Care survey" (or "State of the Nations survey" for short) in recognition that experiences of the foster care system vary across the four nations of the UK.
What impact has the survey had?
Since 2014, our State of the Nations survey has provided us with crucial evidence to make the case for change in the fostering sector.
Below are some examples of how we used the 2021 survey findings to lobby for unprecedented investment in recruitment and retention, secure uplifts to national allowances, achieve funding for crucial programmes to support foster carers, and influence national care reviews across the UK
1. £36 million investment into fostering in England
We used evidence on shortages and how best to retain foster carers to lobby the UK Government to make their biggest ever investment in fostering as part of the Independent Care Review in 2022. They announced £27 million in February 2023 and a further £8.5 million in December and have launched ten recruitment and retention clusters to tackle shortages of foster carers across England.
2. Investment in Fostering Wellbeing to improve the status of foster carers in Wales
Based on findings that foster carers feel they have to fight to be heard for the good of the children in their care, we influenced the Welsh Government to extend funding for the Fostering Wellbeing programme to cover the whole of Wales. The programme promotes equal status for everyone involved in the team around the child and an independent evaluation has found it helps foster carers feel empowered to become stronger advocates for the children in their care.
3. Introduction of delegated authority by default in England
One third of foster carers said they were not always clear about what decisions they have the authority to make about the children in their care, and the same proportion said children’s social workers rarely or never respond in a timely manner to requests for decisions. We submitted this evidence to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care in England, calling for foster carers to have the maximum appropriate decision-making powers so the children in their care have the same opportunities as their peers. The Department for Education committed to introduce delegated authority by default in their ‘Stable Homes Built on Love’ strategy and are now exploring how this can be achieved.
4. Historic changes to national minimum allowances in England and Scotland
Over a third of foster carers said their allowances do not meet the full cost of looking after a child. These findings drove the development of our Cost of Fostering campaign which led to the UK Government announcing a historic 12.43 per cent increase in the national minimum allowance for 2023/24 and a subsequent 6.88 per cent for 2024/25. We also used this evidence to lobby the Scottish Government who finally introduced their Scottish Recommended Allowance in August 2023.
5. Review of Children’s Social Services in Northern Ireland
We submitted evidence on foster carers' status to the Review of Children’s Social Services in Northern Ireland in 2022-2023. We were pleased to see the recommendation in the final report that foster carers should be recognised as valued members of the children's social care team. This recommendation has been identified as one of the guiding principles to inform the implementation of the review, leading to a new reform programme and workstream by the Northern Irish Government dedicated to improving the recruitment and retention of foster carers.
Previous State of the Nation research
State of the Nation's Foster Care 2019
State of the Nation's Foster Care 2016
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