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.

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Nearly 55,000 children in England live with foster carers, and despite a recent fall in the number of children in care, pressure on the system remains intense. Rising costs and the growing role of private providers in residential care and foster placements have exposed deep weaknesses, yet reform has lagged behind the crisis in children’s homes. Only now have ministers set out plans to reshape fostering. The test is whether their plan fixes the system, or papers over its cracks.

The main thrust of a new policy paper from the Department for Education is that more foster carers are needed to meet a target of 10,000 additional non-profit places by 2029. The children’s minister, Josh MacAlister, who previously led a review of the sector under the Tories, likened the plan to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which saw nearly 74,000 people volunteer to host refugees fleeing the war. A national recruitment campaign can be expected soon. With around a third of all current carers aged over 60, it makes sense to try to attract new people to their ranks.

But even the most experienced foster carers do not operate alone. And the rest of the proposals deal with the support systems that surround them. One is for stronger collaboration between councils. Another is for grants so that experienced foster carers can extend or refit their homes to accommodate extra children, potentially including siblings of those already there. A third concerns specialist placements for young people on remand, as an alternative to custody.

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The government has unveiled plans for the biggest shake up of fostering in a generation. Here, sector leaders react to the proposals and highlight their potential benefits and pitfalls.

Renewing Fostering, the Department for Education’s new strategy for reversing the decline in the number of foster carers sets out at the start the government’s belief that all children unable to live at home with their parents “should be able to benefit from a loving foster home while growing up close to their extended family, friends, school, and wider community”.

To achieve this, it sets a target to recruit an additional 10,000 local authority and third sector foster carers by 2029 through a set of reforms across five key areas: recruitment practices, sourcing placements, support services, standards and regulations, and freedoms to innovate. The ambition has been widely welcomed but some sector organisations are concerned some of the proposals may go too far – while others say more radical action in some areas is needed.

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Fostering rules will be relaxed and red tape cut to create 10,000 new places for vulnerable children in England, the government says.

It will become easier for full-time workers to become foster carers under the plans and clearer guidelines are being drawn up to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to get involved.

The government says more young people are ending up in children's homes rather than being placed with foster families because of a "critical shortage" of carers.

It says an additional £88m will help overhaul the fostering system.

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​Minister tells sector leaders that rollout of regional commissioning will be sped up and it will become future model for care system, replacing local authority-based purchasing and provision.

Regional care co-operatives (RCCs) are to take responsibility for children's placements across England from individual local authorities, Josh MacAlister has said.

The children's minister told sector leaders that the government would speed up the rollout of RCCs and saw them as "the future basis for creating homes for children in care", in a speech last week.

RCCs were conceived of by MacAlister in his 2021-22 Independent Review of Children's Social Care as a response to the insufficiency of appropriate local placements for looked-after children. They then became part of the Conservatives' children's social care reform agenda, from 2023-24, and were subsequently taken up by the current Labour government on its election last year.

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Children's minister pledges comprehensive measures to reverse decline in foster care recruitment, after declaring ambition to give children choice over placements.

Children’s minister Josh MacAlister has promised “major changes” to England’s fostering system, backed by “tens of millions of pounds” in funding.

He said he would be soon be bringing forward “a comprehensive set of measures” to “boost the numbers of foster carers and the types of foster care that children need”, adding that it was a “personal priority” for him as minister.

MacAlister’s comments, made in a parliamentary debate last week, followed his recent call for children in care to have a choice of where and with whom they lived, enabled by a surge in foster care recruitment.

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A “landmark” study has been launched to inform the design of future mental health support for care-experienced children and young people.

The 18-month ‘Collage’ project will explore the existing barriers and resources for those aged 13 to 25 seeking help for mental health problems, which academics say is "essential to designing support that truly meets their needs".

The project is co-produced with children and young people “as partners in shaping the research” as well as being participants, the researchers state.

The study, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Programme for Social Care, will also look in-depth at the experience of those who are LGBTQ+, racially minoritised, neuro divergent, or disabled. 

With around one in three young people with diagnosable mental health conditions accessing services – exacerbated by barriers like instability, disrupted relationships, and gaps in care – the research will fill a “critical gap” in understanding, according to academics.

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The development of a National Care Offer to ensure councils offer a consistent standard of financial and housing support to care leavers is among a raft of recommendations made by an influential group of MPs.

The measures are needed to “fix children’s social care and restore care leaver life chances”, according to the Education Committee report published today (10 July).

As described by the Department for Education in evidence to the committee, care leavers have “some of the worst long-term life outcomes in society across health, housing, education and employment”.

The report highlights how a third of young people are homeless within two years of leaving care.

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Overstretched children’s social care services, in the face of rising need, has led to an alarming number of children leaving the care system and becoming homeless, not in employment or not in education. 

A new report by the Education Committee on the children’s social care sector makes a series of recommendations on issues affecting all types of care, including foster care, adoption, kinship care, children’s homes, and support for disabled children. MPs are urging the Government to act now on these recommendations, which they believe are essential to transforming the life chances of young adults leaving the care system. 

Across England, the number of looked-after children stood at 83,630 in 2024 – an increase of over 20% since 2014. Outcomes for young people who leave the care system are also poor. 39% of care leavers aged 19–21 are not in education, training or employment and a third of care leavers become homeless within two years of leaving care. 

The rising level of demand on local authority children’s services departments has been attributed to rising poverty, cost of living pressures, and a decrease in funding for early intervention programmes.  

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In April 2025, councils and their partners started rolling out reforms to children's social care, which have subsequently faced significant criticism from social work experts. We look at what they mean for practitioners.

In recent months, leading social work academics Eileen Munro and Ray Jones have levelled significant criticisms at the government’s reforms to family support and child protection, which councils and their partners have been implementing since April of this year.

Jones said he believed they would increase the number of child protection cases and reduce support to families, contrary to their aims, while Munro warned the reforms were “very likely to fail”, due to the scale of change and what she saw as a lack of testing.

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