Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure children in the foster care system are able to access suitable foster carers in their local area.

The department is committed to ensuring that children can access suitable foster placements close to home. Our fostering reforms will expand national capacity and strengthen regional collaboration, improve recruitment and matching processes, and assist local authorities to maintain stable local options.

In the East Midlands specifically, the Foster for East Midlands regional fostering hub is helping increase recruitment by providing a single, streamlined point of entry for enquiries across Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The hub offers clear information, specialist advice and consistent, high quality support to prospective carers, and has already generated strong interest since launch. It also incorporates initiatives such as Mockingbird constellations, which demonstrate the supportive networks available to carers and help increase the appeal of fostering by reducing isolation and enabling a strong community ethos.