Foster care pressures require “society-wide” response, ADCS President says

Foster care shortages and the mounting pressure of simultaneous local government reforms pose some of the most serious barriers to improving children’s services, ADCS President Rachel Wardell has warned.

Speaking to Social Work Today, Wardell said the ongoing fall in fostering capacity cannot be solved solely by councils or central government, calling it a “society-wide question” about what it now takes for families to feel able to welcome vulnerable children into their homes.

Wardell said the latest figures, showing a further decline in foster carers, highlight the widening gap between public perceptions of fostering and the complex care needs of many children entering the system. Successive Children’s Ministers have claimed increasing the numbers of foster carers to be a priority, but asked whether responsibility for recruiting these new carers lies with national government’s policies or the local leaders implementing them, the ADCS President said we need a rethink on a societal level.

“I think it's a question for society as a whole, actually, about what it takes in the modern world for families to feel able to absorb into their household additional children and to look after them well in a family-based setup. So what we see is different questions about what it would take to incentivise people to be willing and able to provide that kind of care, but none of it is easy.”

She argued that society still tends to picture foster care as a flexible, part-time commitment, when in reality the emotional and developmental needs of children often require intensive, round-the-clock support.

“Some people say that they would like to be carers, but they don't want to give up their full-time work. In theory, it is possible to be a foster carer without giving up full-time work. But in truth, for a lot of the children who would need a foster placement, they actually need someone to be at home all the time, at least early on in their time and place with that household, because otherwise they can't be supported in the way that they need.”

Wardell said the solution must include coordinated action by central government, local authorities and employers, alongside clearer recruitment strategies so councils are seeking the right carers for local need.

“I think there is a mismatch, I guess, between people's ideal of foster care and what it is that children need and we need to find ways of bridging the gap. And I think that comes from all of us. I think that does come from central government. I think it also comes from local authorities and being really clear about, in our recruitment, who we're trying to get to be foster carers. So in some places we might have foster carers who have been approved to care, but the narrow range of sort of ages and needs of children that they've been approved to care for just doesn't come up. So they've been approved, but they can't provide a placement.

Wardell also issued a warning about local government reorganisation (LGR), describing it as “all-consuming” and raising concerns about its impact on the pace and sustainability of major reforms.

“When you reorganise local authorities, that is in its own right a huge piece of work. It's not simple and it touches every single bit of your business. So if you're doing that and there is other work that you also have to be doing in the same time scale, it makes capacity an issue. Just no question.

With children’s social care reform underway, and SEND reform expected, Wardell said councils are being asked to deliver “more than one big complex thing” at once. She urged the government to “take a pause” and consider how overlapping programmes are scheduled.

“I'm not saying that those things shouldn't be run at the same time because there's an urgency around all of the reforms, which I understand. But it is the case that if you're doing more than one big complex thing, it's going to make it hard.”

“On the one hand, we're saying bring it on, because it's very necessary. But on the other hand, we are saying it's a huge, huge piece of work and the timetabling of it and how they interconnect with each other needs to be really understood by the whole of government.”

Despite these concerns, Wardell welcomed the government’s announcement of £550 million in extra funding for the Family First Pathfinders, calling it a “positive signal of intent” that ministers remain committed to reform.

She said ring-fencing of the funds was significant, allowing councils to use the money in the way intended to support children and families. The Pathfinders, she added, have shown how core reform ideas can be adapted to local contexts instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all model.

Asked about the persistent issue of children being placed far away from the places and people they know, with nearly half of children in residential settings still placed more than 20 miles away, wardell said that Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) will help but are not a standalone solution.

“One of the things I think that we'd advocate strongly for is local authorities being supported, encouraged, funded to develop their own in-house provision. That way it is absolutely in your local authority's footprint and you can make sure that your own children are placed locally as a priority.

“One of the challenges in the current marketplace is that providers everywhere are seeking business from everywhere. And so they may make their placements available to the local authority that can pay the highest fees rather than the local authority that is on their doorstep. We also know that provision is created differentially depending on kind of things like house prices. So there are more homes than are needed in some parts of the country and far too few homes in others.

Wardell added that the work of the RCCs will address some of these issues, but that support and funding for local authorities to develop in-house provision, alongside changes to the regulatory environment still needed to be worked on.