Sector bodies give broad welcome to government drive to increase foster care place numbers by 10,000, but Article 39 and BASW sound warning over plans to cut “bureaucracy”, including by reducing use of fostering panels.
The government’s drive to cut “bureaucracy” in reforming England’s fostering system has sparked concerns that the changes will weaken safeguards for children.
Both the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) and children’s rights charity Article 39 raised the issue, after the Department for Education (DfE) said it wanted to simplify rules around fostering as part of its plan to increase place numbers by 10,000 by 2029.
Article 39 particularly highlighted the DfE’s proposal to remove fostering panels from the process of approving carers and carrying out their first review, warning that it risked weakening scrutiny of decisions.
The £88m action plan, which is designed to ensure many more children are looked after in foster families by reversing years of decline in the number of carers, was broadly welcomed by sector bodies.
However, sector charity The Fostering Network criticised the DfE’s failure to pledge improved financial support for carers, while the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers urged greater involvement of independent fostering agencies (IFAs) in delivering on the government’s ambitions.
DfE intent on reducing fostering ‘bureaucracy’
In its action plan, the DfE linked the shortage of foster carers to “a complex framework of legislation, standards and guidance which is difficult to apply, driving excessive bureaucracy, inconsistent decision-making, and confusion across the sector”.
It warned that fostering had become “too rigid and restrictive, with too much risk aversion and not enough focus on supporting the everyday family life of children and their foster families”.
To tackle this, the DfE pledged to consult on rewriting the national minimum standards for fostering and to update foster care and care planning guidance to create a new “rulebook” that prioritised children’s relationships, continuity of care and stability.
Ahead of the wider rulebook changes, the DfE is consulting on reforming the handling of allegations of abuse against foster carers, on the grounds that investigations often took too long, children were too often removed from placements and good carers were left “bruised” by the experience.
The proposals would involve drawing a clearer distinction between allegations and standards of care issues and ensuring carers had access to independent support as soon as possible, received ongoing supervision from their social worker and continued to be paid during investigations.
Plan to cut use of fostering panels
Alongside this, it is consulting on scrapping the use of panels for approving foster carers and carrying out their first review.
The department said that, according to Ofsted, panels approved 98.6% of fostering applications in 2024-25, raising questions as to whether they provided “meaningful additional scrutiny”.
It added that assessments involved “multiple layers of practitioner oversight” besides panels, including assessing social workers, senior managers and agency decision makers (ADMs), with whom lay the final decision on whether to approve.
In justifying its proposal to scrap the use of panels for first reviews, the DfE said that carers were subject to “continual oversight” following approval, notably from supervising social workers.
Concerns proposals will weaken safeguards
However, Article 39 raised concerns about the plan, arguing that it was “vital that multi-disciplinary scrutiny takes place and that children’s holistic needs are considered through professional expertise and lived experience”.
It added that, without the “collective decision making” provided by panels, “excessive power” rested with individuals.
“We are also concerned about plans that introduce further deregulation, which risks weakening essential safeguards for children,” the charity added.
BASW sounded a similar note in its response to the proposals, with its England and Wales lead, Andrew Reece, saying: “Modernising the fostering system and removing outdated barriers for full-time workers and diverse applicants is a common-sense move that we fully support. However, it is vital that ‘cutting red tape’ does not equate to a relaxation of safeguarding standards.
He added: “We can broaden the pool of carers while maintaining high standards, but this requires social workers to have the time and resources to provide robust assessment and ongoing support.”
Charity criticises failure to increase financial support
In its response, The Fostering Network welcomed the DfE’s proposals for a national fostering recruitment campaign and to invest in the Mockingbird model of peer support for carers, which the charity itself developed in the UK. Under this, “constellations” of carers provide peer support for one another, co-ordinated by an experienced carer.
However, it criticised the DfE’s failure to pledge improved financial support for carers. While the DfE said it would investigate variations in the financial support received by carers around the country, in order to achieve greater transparency and consistency, it did not promise to raise national minimum allowances beyond the rate of inflation each year.
The network said that low fees were a core reason why foster carers were leaving their role and meant they were being left out of pocket due to their caring responsibilities.
It called for “urgent financial reform, including council tax exemption for all foster carers and the introduction of a national fee framework, to help standardise fees and allowances across the UK”.
Call to tackle IFA-council divide
The DfE’s intends the majority of the planned 10,000 additional foster care places to be provided by councils, working through regional fostering hubs, whose role will be expanded to encompass assessment and approval of carers, as well as recruitment.
The remainder should be delivered by not-for-profit independent fostering agencies, it said, despite these making up a minority of the IFA sector.
In its response, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said that “a shortage of local authority foster carers has left councils increasingly reliant on an ever-smaller number of increasingly more influential private fostering and residential providers, many of which are making unjustifiable levels of profit”.
However, in a broadly positive response to the proposals, the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP) said that, with IFAs responsible for almost half of children in foster care, it was “essential that the long-standing structural divide between local authority fostering services and IFAs [was] addressed more directly”.
“The system cannot afford parallel approaches that compete for carers or operate in isolation,” said NAFP chief executive Harvey Gallagher, who called for greater partnership working “focused on shared sufficiency planning, better use of existing foster homes and quicker access to the right foster carers for children”.
Improving approval process for kinship carers
Though the plan was primarily focused on mainstream fostering, it also addressed issues facing kinship foster carers, who look after children they already have a relationship with.
The DfE said it was aware that some kinship carers experienced aspects of the assessment process as intrusive and inappropriate, in the context of their pre-existing relationship with the child.
The department said it would encourage councils to work collaboratively with kinship carers, taking account of existing relationships and making use of provisions allowing them to approve them without them having to meet all of the national minimum standards.
The message was welcomed by the charity Kinship, which said that kinship foster carers often reported feeling “pushed into a system which isn’t designed for their families”.
Chief executive Lucy Peake added: “We look forward to exploring with kinship carers how updated fostering guidance and standards could better recognise and support a more tailored approach to kinship foster care and in supporting these families to share their experiences and expertise with policymakers.”
Fostering practice guidance planned
The plan was also welcomed by social care evidence body Foundations, which highlighted the DfE’s pledge to establish an innovation programme, to test new models of care designed to improve uptake of fostering and outcomes for children.
It said it would be publishing a DfE-commissioned practice guide on fostering in the early summer, “to provide local authorities with clear, evidence-based recommendations on the best approaches to supporting foster families”.
Source: Community Care, Mithran Samuel
