Foster Care Fortnight 2026: Why this year feels different

In this article Hannah Sampson explores the national fostering reforms, arguing that national policy and regional collaboration must drive a fundamental redesign of how the system supports, recruits and retains foster carers.

Foster Care Fortnight is always a chance to recognise the vital role foster carers play in children’s lives. 

This year feels different. Alongside that recognition, there is a clear push to change how the fostering system itself works - at a scale and pace we have not seen for some time.

The context will be familiar to anyone working in children’s services. Demand for foster care continues to rise, with around 81,000 children in care in England and almost two-thirds of them living with foster families. Local authorities are facing increasing challenges in recruiting and retaining carers, rising placement costs, and sustained pressure on budgets. These dynamics are well understood and widely documented across the sector.

Within this, there is growing evidence that, for local authority fostering services, current approaches are not consistently converting interest into new foster carers and more loving homes for children. Prospective carers can experience different messages depending on where they live, wait too long for next steps, or feel unsupported at the earliest stages. Too many disengage before reaching approval - not because of a lack of interest, but because the journey is difficult to navigate. 

This is not a new problem, but it has raised the question: to what extent can local authorities, acting individually, resolve these challenges - particularly when they are often recruiting from the same communities and facing the same constraints? 

The shift towards regional end-to-end fostering hubs

The Department for Education’s fostering reforms are intended to respond to these challenges.

In February 2026, the DfE published Renewing Fostering: Homes for 10,000 More Children, set out a national ambition to create 10,000 additional foster placements by 2029 through a series of reforms, supported by £88 million of investment. It is the most ambitious national commitments to fostering in a generation. 

The direction of travel goes beyond a focus on recruitment alone. The focus is shifting towards how the whole fostering system is designed, operated and experienced by foster carers - not just how carers are attracted, but how they move through enquiry, assessment, approval and ongoing support.

In March 2026, the DfE announced the intention to fund and develop new “end-to-end” fostering hubs. Building on the regional recruitment hubs already established across England, these models aim to integrate the fostering journey from initial enquiry and assessment through to approval, training and ongoing support. 

Alongside this, the plan announces the acceleration of Regional Care Cooperatives (RCCs) across England, with the Government investing £10.8 million in RCCs and launching an EOI for the next round of up to 6 new RCCs.

Why these reforms could be transformational

Regional collaboration creates opportunities that are difficult for individual local authorities to achieve on their own.

At a practical level, it allows areas to move away from running multiple parallel systems that are trying to solve the same problem. Instead of duplicating marketing, processes and infrastructure across neighbouring councils, there is more scope to align approaches, share insight and make better use of collective capacity. It also helps reduce the unhelpful situation where local authority fostering services are effectively competing for carers in the same communities.

What feels different now is how this is being taken further through end-to-end design.

To date, fostering recruitment hubs have mainly focused on the front end of the journey - particularly recruitment campaigns and initial enquiries. End-to-end hubs go further, by creating the opportunity to rethink how the whole experience works, from first contact through to long-term support. 

It also creates space to rethink how assessment is organised across areas, how handovers between teams are reduced, how data is used to understand where carers are dropping out, and how a carer is supported once they are approved, so carers are more likely to stay and succeed.  

Taken together, these are the points where many carers currently experience friction. Designing at a regional level makes it easier to address these issues in a more coordinated way, while still allowing local relationships and knowledge to shape delivery.

Reform must remain grounded in relationships 

That said, this isn’t about lift and shift. Simply bringing services together at a regional level will not, on its own, improve outcomes. The impact will depend on the choices areas make about how they redesign processes, deploy staff and prioritise the experience of carers. 

Fostering is, at its core, about relationships. For carers, what matters day to day is not the operating model, but whether they feel supported throughout their journey, whether advice is available when they need it, and whether they are treated as valued partners in a child’s care.

Local authorities involved in the programme understand this, and are approaching this with a clear focus on how carers experience the system, not just how it is structured. Most are still in the design phase, working through how best to provide consistent support, including access to therapeutic expertise and stronger peer networks, alongside strengthening recruitment activity. A key priority is ensuring carers feel heard, valued and well supported day to day - not only during the approval process, but throughout their time as foster carers.  

This is shaping how new models are being designed, with greater attention to the practical and emotional realities of fostering, rather than simply replicating existing processes at a larger scale. 

A significant challenge, but a bigger opportunity

If implemented effectively, regional fostering reforms have the potential to create a more collaborative, resilient and sustainable fostering system.

None of this is straightforward. Delivering this level of change across multiple local authorities, systems and workforces is complex, and progress will depend on sustained leadership and collaboration.  

However, what feels different is the combination of factors now in place: national policy backing, funding, and a growing number of areas actively redesigning their models together. The pace and intent behind this work is notable - and reflects a shared recognition that incremental change is unlikely to be enough. 

At Mutual Ventures, we are excited to be supporting regions and groups of local authorities as they develop and expand these new end-to-end hub models. 

Foster Care Fortnight is a moment to recognise the contribution of amazing carers up and down the country. This year, it is also a moment to ask whether the system around them is set up to support them well enough, and to take the opportunity to do something meaningfully different.

If you'd like to discuss the fostering programme further, please get in touch with Hannah at: hannah.sampson@mutualventures.co.uk