Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support local authorities to ensure that children in foster care arrangements are placed in a suitable home.

The department is supporting local authorities to recruit and retain more foster carers so that councils can find more suitable foster homes, resulting in greater choice for better placement matching for the children in their care. Currently, there are 10 fostering regional programmes active across England, collaborating with 64% of all local authorities to recruit and retain foster carers who will provide loving homes local to the children who need them.

As part of children’s social care reform, we are providing £15 million of funding in 2025/26 to recruit and retain more foster carers. We will also provide an additional £25 million for fostering covering the 2026/27 and 2027/28 financial years. As part of this model, we are supporting foster carers and children by expanding ‘The Mockingbird Family Model’. Evaluation shows that Mockingbird improves carer retention, meaning that local authorities have a greater number of suitable fostering places available.

In addition, the department funds ‘Fosterlink’, a diagnostic support service for local authority fostering services, which reviews current processes to identify areas for service and practice improvements to support recruitment and retention. The department is also continuing to fund ‘Fosterline’, a free helpline service for current and prospective foster carers.