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Ofsted has sharpened its focus on stability for children in care in its judgments of social care providers, particularly children’s homes and independent fostering agencies.

The changes to its social care common inspection framework (SCCIF) are a response to concerns that some providers are rejecting referrals for children with complex needs due to concerns about the impact on their Ofsted ratings.

As a result, those children are being placed far from family or friends, experiencing multiple moves or ending up in unsuitable or unregistered accommodation.

Ratings concerns ‘driving rejection of children with complex needs’

Research for the regulator published last year found that 60% of local authorities believed these concerns were often or always a reason that homes rejected referrals for children with complex needs.

By contrast, 60% of children’s home providers said concerns about the impact of a child with complex needs on their rating were never or rarely a reason for rejecting a referral.

At the time of the research’s publication, Ofsted said there was almost no difference between SCCIF grades for homes that care for children with complex needs and those for all homes, with about four in five judged good or outstanding.

This reflected the fact that the SCCIF “was designed to focus on children’s progress and experiences, as opposed to their outcomes”, meaning inspectors should take account of children’s starting points.

However, in a blog post published last month, Ofsted’s national director for social care, Yvette Stanley, said that the perception persisted among some homes that taking on a child with more complex needs would hurt their rating.

Greater focus on stability in inspection framework

Ofsted said the changes, enacted last week, would put a sharper focus on:

• how providers promote and sustain stability for children, including those with high needs;
• how providers balance the needs of a child requiring placement with those already living in the setting;
• the timeliness of a provider’s work to prepare children for their next move;
• how accurately placement decisions reflect a provider’s statement of purpose.

“We want providers to be risk-aware, not risk-averse,” said Stanley.

“I hope these changes send a clear message that we will recognise providers who step up to support our children with complex needs, and who stick with them though the most difficult times.”

The number of mainstream foster care households in England has fallen by 10% over the past three years, despite a rising care population, official figures have shown.

As of 31 March 2024, there were 33,745 approved non-kinship foster households, down by 1,260 (3.6%) on the year before and by 3,580 (9.6%) since 2021, revealed the Ofsted data.

Though the number of family and friends carer households grew for a second consecutive year in 2023-24, from 8,400 to 8,865, they are approved to care for specific children only.

Also, the growth in their number has been far exceeded by the decline in the number of mainstream households, meaning total fostering capacity has fallen from 45,370 to 42,615 from 2021-24, a drop of 6.1% (2,755).

Falling numbers of fostering places

The fall in the number of mainstream fostering households translated into a drop in the number of approved fostering places in 2023-24, from 72,770 to 70,465. This figure has fallen year on year since 2020, when it stood at 78,830.

Meanwhile, the number of filled approved mainstream places, which was stable from 2021-23, fell in 2023-24, from 44,580 to 42,870.

This is despite the number of children in care in England having grown by 3,070, to 83,840, from 2021-23, a period during which the children’s home sector has grown significantly.

Sector charity the Fostering Network said the declining number of carers was the result of a lack of remuneration, inadequate support from their council or fostering agency and insufficient respect for their role.

In response, the Department for Education (DfE) pointed to increased investment since 2023 in foster care recruitment through the rollout of regional hubs to support applicants through the process, which will be extended to the whole country in 2025-26.

Councils disproportionately hit by fall in carer numbers

As in 2022-23, the fall in the number of mainstream fostering households in 2023-24 was driven by reductions in the numbers approved by local authorities, which fell by 975 (4.9%), from 19,835 to 18,860.

There was a smaller fall in the number approved by independent fostering agencies (IFAs), which dropped by 280 (1.8%), to 14,890. IFAs now account for 44% of mainstream fostering households – up from 41% in 2020 – and 48% of filled mainstream places, up from 43% in 2020.

However, while the number of IFA-approved households grew in 2019-20 and 2020-21, this figure has reduced in each of the last three years.

Recruitment and retention

There was a slight increase in the number of applications to foster in 2023-24, with 8,485 households doing so, up from 8,010 the previous year.

However, the number of newly approved mainstream households was flat year on year (4,055, compared with 4,080 in 2022-23) and below annual levels seen between 2019-20 and 2021-22.

The number of deregistrations was 4,820 in 2023-24, with 4,280 households leaving fostering altogether during the year, down from 4,570 in 2022-23.

Policy response to foster care shortages

Under its Stable Homes, Built on Love strategy, the previous Conservative government took action to bolster foster care recruitment and retention, including by:

• Increasing national minimum fostering allowances by 12.43% in 2023 and 6.88% in 2024.
• Investing £36m, from 2023-25, in 10 regional fostering recruitment hubs, covering 64% of local authorities. These are designed to provide a single point of contact for people interested in fostering and support them through the process from initial enquiry to application.

The majority of hubs were launched in summer 2024, after the timeframe of Ofsted’s figures, meaning their impact is yet to be seen in the data. Labour has continued with the regional hubs policy, allocating £15m in 2025-26 to roll them out to the rest of the country.

Recruitment hubs ‘will generate hundreds of new placements’

A Department for Education spokesperson said this would “generate hundreds of new foster placements and offer children a stable environment to grow up in”.

“Foster carers play a hugely important role in the wider children’s social care system and will be at the heart of our thinking as we re-focus the system to provide earlier support and greater stability for children,” the spokesperson added.

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) said it welcomed the extra investment but stressed that it was “imperative that local and central government continue to work together to ensure we have enough foster carers and that they have the resources, training, and support needed to thrive in their roles”.

Leaving IFAs out of recruitment hubs ‘a strategic error’

The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers, which represents IFAs, meanwhile, raised concerns about the exclusion of agencies from recruitment hubs.

“Government has decided to roll out the recruitment and retention hubs across England,” said NAFP chief executive Harvey Gallagher.

“This is premature, given the short time most have been operational. But, in the light of falling fostering capacity, it’s understandable that government hope these hubs will provide a possible solution.

“The hubs have excluded IFAs – this is a strategic error. Local authorities and IFAs are two parts of the same system, as this dataset demonstrates. Government policy should reflect this.

“We need to rid ourselves of historical divides and pull together to provide the high quality integrated fostering provision which our children and young people deserve.”

Lack of remuneration and support causing carers to quit – charity

The Fostering Network said carers were leaving for three main reasons – inadequate remuneration, lack of support from their fostering service and insufficient respect for their role – and warned that “annual losses will continue unless urgent action on a much greater scale is taken”.

“Action needs to be taken to make fostering more sustainable – we urgently need a UK-wide fostering strategy that addresses the retention of foster carers as much as recruitment,” added chief executive Sarah Thomas.

“We are also calling for a national recruitment campaign that is underpinned by a more personal and child centered approach when a foster carer picks up the phone to enquire about fostering.”

Carers ‘are ignored and blamed’

The National Union of Professional Foster Carers, which represents about 8% of carers, said falling numbers were down to carers’ voices being “ignored” and them being “blamed whenever anything goes wrong”.

General secretary Robin Findlay said regional fostering recruitment hubs would not work when “current carers were leaving and advising prospective carers not to join”.

“Personal recommendation is the best way to recruit new carers but until the system is fixed and current carers treated fairly this will not happen,” he said.

Findlay said the union had put forward ideas to the DfE about changing the way allegations of harm or concerns about standards of care in relation to foster carers were handled.

He claimed that, currently, “fabrications take precedence over facts and evidence and the foster carers are often not invited to contribute to the fact finding until the matter has been self-investigated and decisions have already been made”.

Under the union’s proposed solution, providers and carers would both supply evidence to a legally-qualified external adjudicator, who would determine the outcome.

Allegation statistics

The number of abuse allegations made against foster carers in 2023-24 – 3,050 – was similar to levels seen in the previous two years, though above the numbers recorded in 2019-20 (2,495) and 2020-21 (2,600), showed the Ofsted figures.

Most of the allegations were made by foster children (1,880), with just over half concerning physical abuse (1,610) and almost a quarter (735) emotional abuse.

In about half of cases (1,595), the concern was resolved with no further action taken, while in 875 instances (28.7%), the concern remained and the issue was referred to the fostering panel. In the remainder (575), a period of continued monitoring was agreed.

The majority of social workers support banning profit-making companies from providing children’s care, a Community Care poll has found.

This follows the publication of a bill in Wales to end profit-making from the provision of children’s care placements.

Under the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill, only not-for-profit organisations and councils would be able to provide fostering, children’s home or secure accommodation placements, following a transitional period.

Wales would be the first UK country to enact such a ban, though the Scottish Government is committed to doing the same and for-profit provision is scarce – though legal – in Northern Ireland.

In England, as of 2023, independent fostering agencies (IFAs) accounted for 47% of filled mainstream fostering places and private children’s homes accounted for 81% of residential placements.

But what would be the ideal way forward?

In a recent Community Care poll, 55% of practitioners backed a ban on profit-making companies providing care placements. A further 35% said they supported a ban in principle, but feared it would worsen placement shortages.

The remaining 9% disagreed with children’s care placements only being provided by not-for-profit organisations or councils.

Councils are referring more children from residential to foster care, independent fostering agencies (IFAs) have reported.

The trend reflects both the progress made by children in residential placements, as well as cost concerns on councils’ part, agencies told their umbrella body, the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP).

But they warned that such moves needed to go at the pace of the child, to help manage their anxieties, and also stressed the need to allay foster carers’ concerns about young people coming from children’s homes having particularly high needs.

The findings came in NAFP research with 23 IFAs tracking trends in referrals from councils from 2019 to 2022.

Rising numbers of residential-to-fostering moves

Though the report did not include numerical information – because of difficulties in separating referrals from re-referrals – it published graphs showing a doubling in the number of cases of children being referred to IFAs from residential care from 2019-21. Agencies also reported increasing numbers of such “step across” referrals in 2022, particularly in England.

The report said the trend was driven by:

• Cases of children who preferred, and were better suited to, foster care but had been placed temporarily in a children’s home due to a shortage of appropriate placements.
• Children making significant progress in residential care due to effective therapeutic interventions, making them ready and willing to move to a family-like setting.
• Local authorities being “increasingly concerned about the high cost of residential care” and so exploring foster care with children.

IFAs said that, while some children moved seamlessly from foster to residential care, others needed a planned transition that could take several months, with it being “fairly common for children
to experience anxiety and change their minds about a move”. However, some councils took a “blanket approach” to step across referrals, IFAs claimed.

Agencies also said that they sometimes struggled to convince carers to take referrals from residential care. Many believed the young people “would have extremely high levels of needs and that risk factors would be difficult to manage” because of children’s homes reputations as a placement of last resort.

IFAs taking more children

The net number of IFA placements, and agencies’ share of fostering provision, grew in England from 2018-22, according to Ofsted data, and this was reflected in the NAFP report, which found rising referral numbers from 2019-22.

Within this overall rise, agencies reported increases in referrals for younger children, parent and child placements, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and those with additional needs.

Providers reported a “sharp increase”, particularly since spring 2022, in referrals for children – some very young – with deteriorating mental health, with rising numbers self-harming as well. Within parent and child placements, IFAs had also witnessed an increase in parental mental health problems in parent and child placements, since the pandemic began.

They said that these placements required a specific skillset on carers’ part, as did other specialist placements, such as those for disabled children.

However, IFAs reported that councils sometimes classified a referral as being for a “standard placement”, when agencies felt more specialist provision was needed. In some cases, children were referred whom IFAs felt would benefit from a residential placement.

It also said that local authorities needed to have “greater awareness and appreciation of the type and level of support that even the most skilled and experienced foster carers need when caring for children with increasingly complex needs”.

Need to improve quality of referrals

The report stressed the need for “high quality assessments to better inform decisions about the type of placement that was being sought for each individual child”.

It said the quality of referrals varied within, as well as between, councils and this was driven by factors including the time pressures on, and turnover of, local authority children in care social workers.

Where a child was moving from another placement, agencies reported that “the knowledge and experience of the foster carer and/or supervising social worker (or sometimes residential staff) was often not harnessed to ensure a new referral was accurate and reflective of the child’s needs and wishes”.

NAFP chief executive Harvey Gallagher said the key message from the report was the importance of children being in “most appropriate placement to meet their needs”.

“Not only is this best for children, but it is also the best way of spending hard-pressed local authority budgets,” he added.

DfE fostering plans

The report comes in the wake of the Department for Education’s consultative strategy for children’s social care, published last month. Its key measures on fostering are:

• Investing £27m in recruiting and retaining foster carers from 2023-25, with a focus on particular shortage areas such as sibling groups, teenagers, unaccompanied children, children who have suffered complex trauma or parent and child placements.
• £3m of this will go towards a regional recruitment project in the North East.
• Increasing national minimum allowances for foster carers by 12.43% in April in reflection of the rising cost of living.
• Testing the development of regional care co-operatives, collectives of local authorities that would take over responsibility for commissioning care placements from their member councils. The DfE believes this will widen the choice of placements available for children, while also reducing “excess profit making” by large children’s home and fostering providers by improving the quality of local authority commissioning.

On behalf of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, president Steve Crocker said: “Finding the right homes for children as close to the people and places they know is a key part of this, however, demand for placements far outstrips supply, including for foster homes, making this increasingly difficult to do.

‘Worrying rise in placement costs’

“The rising costs of placements is also very worrying and financially problematic for local authorities as is the profiteering by some private providers on the backs of vulnerable children.

“We need more placements, of all types for children when and where they need them and greater government action on profiteering in the children’s placements market, regional care co-operatives will not provide the whole solution to these pressing challenges.”

The ADCS also backed the NAFP report’s call for a national recruitment and retention campaign for foster carers, which Crocker said would “complement the work local authorities, and regions, are already doing to recruit and retain carers”.