Listen: foster caring in the UK

Data from one of the UK’s leading foster care charities has shown that an estimated 38,000 new children are expected to have entered the care system this year – that’s one child every fifteen minutes. But with around 30,000 children already without a foster family to care for them, we’re facing a real crisis. The Foster Care Charity – an organisation that works in partnership with over 70 local authorities in the UK in this sector – fears that without more families opening their homes to foster children, more pressure will be added to an already struggling social care system.

That’s why they’re urging for fostering to be on the government agenda whilst increasing social care resourcing for foster carer recruitment and public education about fostering. This will help get more foster families in place to support these children and young people.

On the Foster Care Charity’s 25th anniversary, we celebrate the brilliant work the organisation has done in
helping the UK’s next generation of young people. Since 1999, over 1,300 children have been cared for by FCC foster families, with the average length of time that a child stays with an FCC foster carer now being over 3 years compared to a national average of just over 12 months. But the number of children being referred to the charity for a foster family has risen significantly over the past decades – from 8 per day in 2008 to a huge 310 per day in 2024.

Aston spoke to Steve Field, director of childcare at The Foster Care Charity.