Foster Carer Recruitment Is Not a Marketing Problem. It Is a System Problem.
Why England will not create 10,000 additional foster care places simply by buying more advertising
In February 2026, the Government published Renewing Fostering: Homes for 10,000 More Children.
The ambition is significant: to create 10,000 additional local authority and third-sector foster care places by 2029, supported by £88 million of investment over two years. The plan recognises the sharp decline in foster carer numbers and proposes national communications, regional collaboration, stronger support for carers, innovation and a simpler regulatory framework. (GOV.UK Assets)
It is an important commitment.
It also raises a fundamental question.
Does England currently have a foster carer recruitment system capable of converting increased public interest into 10,000 additional foster care places?
A national campaign may encourage more people to consider fostering. It may generate website visits, telephone calls, completed online forms and attendance at information events.
But awareness is not the same as recruitment.
An enquiry is not a foster carer.
An application is not an approval.
An approval does not automatically create the right placement in the right location for the right child.
And approving more foster carers will not solve the problem if large numbers of experienced carers continue to leave.
Foster carer recruitment has frequently been treated as a marketing challenge. The proposed solution is therefore often more advertising, a redesigned campaign, a larger social media budget or a new recruitment message.
Marketing matters. Without awareness and visibility, a recruitment system has nobody to recruit.
But the evidence suggests that England’s difficulties extend far beyond the volume of people seeing fostering advertisements.
The deeper problem is the performance of the complete recruitment and retention system.
The scale of the challenge
At 31 March 2025, there were 81,770 children in care in England. Of these, 54,820—approximately two-thirds—were living in foster homes.
Those children were being supported by 42,190 fostering households, including mainstream and formal kinship fostering households. (GOV.UK Assets)
The number of approved mainstream foster carers fell from 64,295 in 2019 to 56,345 in 2025, a reduction of approximately 12 per cent.
The decline has not been evenly distributed. Local authority mainstream foster carer numbers fell from 38,190 to 30,930 over the same period, while the independent fostering agency figure remained comparatively stable, moving from 26,105 to 25,415. (GOV.UK Assets)
The age profile presents a further strategic concern. Seventy per cent of approved mainstream foster carers are now aged over 50, including approximately one-third aged 60 or above. This is not a criticism of older carers, who provide enormous experience and capacity. It is a warning that the sector must recruit sufficient numbers of new carers to replace those who will eventually retire. (GOV.UK Assets)
Recruitment is currently failing to offset departures.
During 2024–25, 4,430 mainstream fostering households joined the sector, while 4,690 deregistered. Although this net reduction was smaller than in the previous year, England still lost more fostering households than it gained. (GOV.UK)
This is the environment in which 10,000 additional places must be created.
It cannot be achieved by attracting attention alone.
The difference between enquiries and outcomes
Fostering providers understandably measure enquiries.
They are immediate, visible and relatively easy to report. A campaign begins, enquiries rise and the marketing activity appears to be working.
However, enquiry numbers can produce false confidence.
Ofsted’s detailed analysis of recruitment and retention found that, in the year ending March 2023, fostering services recorded 125,195 initial enquiries from prospective mainstream fostering households.
Only 6 per cent resulted in an application.
The proportion had remained between 6 and 8 per cent since 2018–19. Local authorities recorded an enquiry-to-application rate of 12 per cent, compared with 5 per cent for independent fostering agencies. However, independent agencies received 79 per cent of all recorded enquiries, and one person may contact several different providers. (GOV.UK)
These figures require careful interpretation.
An enquiry is not defined and recorded identically by every organisation. One provider may count an initial telephone conversation. Another may count the completion of a short online form. Another may include a social media lead whose only action was to request further information.
Prospective carers may also enquire with their local authority and several independent agencies. National enquiry totals therefore do not represent a corresponding number of separate individuals.
The Department for Education’s qualitative research into conversion rates concluded that differences in geography, demographics, housing, local need and data-recording practices may explain variations between providers more effectively than a simple comparison between local authorities and independent agencies. The study also cautioned that its ten case studies constituted a small sample and could not support sweeping generalisations across the whole sector. (GOV.UK Assets)
That limitation is important.
A 6 per cent conversion figure should not be interpreted as proof that 94 per cent of interested people have been mishandled. Some were gathering information. Some were ineligible. Some contacted multiple agencies. Some may return several years later.
Nevertheless, the scale of the difference between enquiries and applications demands much more attention than it currently receives.
It should prompt providers to ask not merely how many enquiries they generated, but:
Who enquired? What happened to them? When did they leave? Why did they leave? Could anything reasonably have been done differently?
Marketing is the entrance—not the whole building
Good marketing performs several essential functions.
It makes a fostering provider findable. It helps potential carers understand what fostering involves. It reaches communities that may never previously have considered fostering. It answers questions, reduces uncertainty and gives someone a reason to take the first step.
Poor marketing can therefore damage recruitment before a conversation has even begun.
Generic messaging, unclear eligibility information, outdated websites, inappropriate imagery and campaigns that look identical to every other provider’s activity can all reduce response.
But even excellent marketing cannot compensate for weaknesses later in the process.
It cannot compensate for an enquiry that is not called for several days.
It cannot compensate for an initial conversation that feels like an interrogation.
It cannot compensate for unclear or inconsistently applied eligibility criteria.
It cannot compensate for a handover in which the prospective carer has to repeat everything to a new member of staff.
It cannot compensate for delays in allocating an assessing social worker.
It cannot compensate for long periods without communication.
It cannot compensate for poor support after approval.
It cannot compensate for experienced foster carers leaving and telling others that they felt undervalued.
When those problems exist, increasing advertising may simply send more people into a process that is already losing too many.
The first response is part of recruitment strategy
The first contact following an enquiry is often discussed as an administrative task.
It is not.
It is a critical recruitment intervention.
The Department for Education’s conversion research identified prompt responses as an important enabler. Providers participating in the research commonly aimed to respond within one or two working days, with some contacting enquirers during evenings or weekends when they were more likely to be available.
The research was explicit that speed matters: when enquiries are not followed up promptly, prospective carers may approach another provider. (GOV.UK Assets)
That does not mean the fastest organisation will always recruit the person.
Quality matters as much as speed.
The first conversation must balance safeguarding and eligibility with curiosity, encouragement and respect. It should help the enquirer understand fostering while allowing the recruiter to understand the individual.
Too often, the process begins with the provider talking rather than listening.
The prospective carer is told about the organisation, the assessment, the children who need placements and the demands of fostering before the recruiter has properly explored what brought that person to the conversation.
A more effective first discussion would establish:
- why the person is considering fostering;
- what they already understand about it;
- their family and employment circumstances;
- the experience and strengths they may bring;
- their concerns and unanswered questions;
- their likely timescale;
- and what appropriate next step would help them make an informed decision.
The purpose is not to persuade every person to apply.
The purpose is to ensure that suitable people receive a timely, informed and respectful opportunity to progress.
Recruitment cannot operate separately from assessment
Many organisations divide foster carer recruitment and assessment into separate operational functions.
That may be structurally necessary, but it creates a significant risk.
To the provider, recruitment and assessment are different departments.
To the prospective foster carer, they are one journey.
A person may spend several weeks building trust with a recruiter. They may disclose personal information, discuss their family and explain their motivation. When they move into assessment, the recruiter may disappear and a new professional relationship begins.
If that transition is not managed properly, momentum can be lost.
The Department for Education’s research identified several barriers after application, including delays in allocating assessors, lengthy checks, frustration with the time taken to reach approval and the invasive nature of parts of the assessment. Long periods of waiting were reported as compromising applicant motivation and morale. (GOV.UK Assets)
The assessment must, of course, be robust.
Children need safe, capable and resilient carers. It would be irresponsible to increase conversion by weakening assessment standards or approving people who cannot meet children’s needs.
But robustness and unnecessary delay are not the same thing.
Neither are professional curiosity and a deficit-based culture.
The same government-commissioned research reported concerns that some prospective carers encountered unwelcoming or judgemental attitudes, intimidating language, discrimination or an approach focused predominantly on deficiencies.
It found that prompt responses, flexibility, continuity through a single contact, relational practice, access to people with lived experience and reducing anxiety about the process were among the factors that supported progression. (GOV.UK Assets)
This is not an argument for approving everyone.
It is an argument for ensuring that suitable people are not lost because the process itself becomes the obstacle.
Applications tell us more—but still not enough
During 2024–25, fostering services received 8,290 applications.
By the end of the reporting period, 5,370 of those applications had been completed and 2,925 remained in progress. Of the completed applications, 2,050 were approved, approximately 3,290 were withdrawn and only around 30 were formally rejected.
Of the withdrawn applications, approximately 2,175 were withdrawn by applicants and 1,115 by fostering services. (GOV.UK)
These figures deserve serious examination.
They do not prove that thousands of potential foster carers could have been approved. Many withdrawals will have been correct and unavoidable. Personal circumstances change. Information emerges during assessment. Applicants reconsider the responsibilities involved. Services may determine that continuing would not be appropriate.
However, withdrawal cannot be treated simply as an administrative outcome.
Ofsted found that, among applications started during the year and withdrawn by applicants, commonly recorded reasons included changed household circumstances, other or unknown reasons, and the fostering process not being what the applicant expected. The latter reason accounted for 20 per cent of applicant withdrawals recorded in that category. (GOV.UK)
The phrase “other or unknown” is particularly significant.
A provider cannot improve a process when it does not know why people left it.
It is not sufficient to record that somebody withdrew. Providers need to understand the stage, circumstances and experience surrounding that decision.
Was the person genuinely no longer able to foster?
Did they choose another provider?
Did their employment make the model financially impossible?
Did the assessment take too long?
Did communication become inconsistent?
Did the reality of fostering differ from the marketing?
Did they feel judged, unwelcome or unsupported?
Was it simply not the right time?
Each explanation requires a different organisational response.
Without that qualitative information, all withdrawals look identical on a spreadsheet, even though the causes may be entirely different.
The “not now” population
Foster carer recruitment is frequently managed as a binary process.
A person either progresses or does not progress.
That is too simplistic.
Some people are ready to apply immediately. Others may be interested but need to move house, change employment, resolve a family issue or wait until their children are older.
The Department for Education’s research found that the period between an initial enquiry and eventual fostering could be between two and five years for some people. It recommended keeping communication open with those who might become eligible or ready in the future. (GOV.UK Assets)
A person who cannot foster today is not necessarily a failed enquiry.
They may be a future foster carer.
They may also be willing to attend events, share information, support a recruitment campaign, introduce the provider to an employer or community organisation, or encourage somebody else to enquire.
Yet many providers effectively end the relationship with some variation of:
“Come back when you are ready.”
That places the entire responsibility on the prospective carer and assumes their interest will remain unchanged for several years.
A structured nurture approach would provide occasional, useful and permission-based communication. It would keep the relationship alive without applying pressure.
This is particularly important because becoming a foster carer is rarely an impulsive decision. It may require agreement between partners, conversations with birth children, financial planning, changes to employment and preparation of the home.
Recruitment must therefore accommodate different levels of readiness rather than measuring everyone against a single immediate route to application.
Retention is part of recruitment
No foster carer recruitment strategy is complete without retention.
The Government’s 2026 fostering plan states that keeping carers is as important as recruiting new ones. It cites earlier data indicating that almost 30 per cent of carers leave fostering within their first two years.
It also recognises that carers who leave feeling exhausted, unheard or undervalued may discourage others from coming forward. (GOV.UK Assets)
This connection is often underestimated.
Existing foster carers are among the sector’s most influential recruiters.
They speak to friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbours. They participate in online groups. They attend community events. They describe their experiences publicly and privately.
A positive foster carer experience creates advocacy.
A poor experience creates a recruitment barrier that no advertising agency can fully control.
Retention also affects the type of capacity available.
Losing an experienced carer who can support siblings, teenagers or children with complex needs is not equivalent to losing a generic space on a capacity report. Replacing that expertise can take years.
National data also demonstrates why approved places cannot be viewed as a simple measure of available capacity.
At March 2025, England had 69,825 approved mainstream fostering places. Approximately 60 per cent were filled, 17 per cent were vacant and about one in five were recorded as unavailable.
A vacancy does not necessarily mean that a suitable placement is available for any child. Geography, the carer’s approval, household circumstances, matching considerations, planned breaks and the needs of children already living in the home all affect usability. (GOV.UK)
The real objective is therefore not to create the largest possible number of theoretical places.
It is to create and retain the right range of available foster homes, in the right locations, for the children who need them.
Every provider has a different constraint
There is no single explanation for weak foster carer recruitment.
One provider may have insufficient visibility.
Another may generate a large number of enquiries but contact too few of them.
Another may make contact but struggle to progress people to home visits.
Another may have effective recruiters but no assessment capacity.
Another may lose applicants during lengthy checks or poor handovers.
Another may approve carers who then wait too long for a suitable placement.
Another may recruit in locations that do not correspond with the geographical needs of children.
Another may have a retention problem that continually removes experienced capacity.
This is why national averages must be used carefully.
They help us understand the scale and direction of the problem. They do not diagnose the performance of an individual fostering service.
A provider with a lower enquiry-to-application rate is not automatically worse than one with a higher rate. It may define enquiries differently, invest heavily in broad awareness activity or operate in a more competitive market.
Equally, a provider reporting a high conversion rate may simply record an enquiry at a much later stage.
The appropriate question is not:
How does our headline conversion rate compare with everybody else?
It is:
Where does our own system lose suitable people, and what evidence explains that loss?
What fostering leaders should measure
Most senior management reports contain totals.
Enquiries this month.
Applications this quarter.
Approvals this year.
Those figures matter, but totals alone do not reveal system performance.
A more useful recruitment dashboard would examine:
- enquiry source;
- geographical location;
- time and day of enquiry;
- speed of first attempted contact;
- successful contact rate;
- progression to initial visit;
- progression to application;
- time spent at each stage;
- applications awaiting allocation;
- applications withdrawn by stage;
- applicant and service reasons for withdrawal;
- demographics and communities reached;
- types of fostering considered;
- approval timescales;
- approved carers without placements;
- deregistration reasons;
- and retention by length of service.
It should combine quantitative and qualitative evidence.
The Department for Education’s conversion study made this point directly. It found that providers often collected numerical data but lacked sufficiently detailed qualitative information explaining why people did not progress. It recommended collecting feedback from prospective carers and identifying both the point at which they left and their reasons for doing so. (GOV.UK Assets)
The numbers show where something may be going wrong.
The conversations explain why.
Both are required.
The danger of buying more enquiries
When recruitment performance declines, the instinctive response is often to increase marketing expenditure.
Sometimes that is correct.
A provider cannot convert enquiries it never receives.
But additional advertising should follow diagnosis, not replace it.
Consider a provider that generates 1,000 enquiries but contacts only 600 successfully. Of those, 150 progress to an initial visit, 60 apply and 20 are approved.
The organisation may conclude that it needs 2,000 enquiries to approve 40 carers.
But what if the more important questions are:
Why were 400 people never contacted successfully?
How quickly were calls made?
Were different contact methods attempted?
Were evenings and weekends covered?
Why did 450 contacted people not reach an initial visit?
What did the first conversations sound like?
Why did 90 people complete a visit but not apply?
What happened to the 40 applicants who were not approved?
Doubling advertising without answering those questions may double expenditure while reproducing the same weaknesses at a larger scale.
More leads entering a leaking system do not repair the system.
They simply make the leakage more expensive.
What an effective recruitment system looks like
A modern foster carer recruitment system should connect every stage of the journey.
It should make the provider visible to the communities it needs to reach.
Its messaging should be honest, specific and relevant rather than relying on generic appeals.
It should make enquiry simple.
It should respond quickly and at times that reflect how people live and work.
It should treat the initial conversation as a professional recruitment discussion, balancing eligibility with encouragement and listening.
It should offer continuity and explain clearly what happens next.
It should ensure that recruitment and assessment teams share responsibility for the candidate experience.
It should provide a robust but proportionate assessment, with delays actively managed and communication maintained.
It should distinguish between “no”, “not now” and “not with us”.
It should collect meaningful reasons when people leave.
It should involve existing foster carers and people with lived experience.
It should connect recruitment plans with local placement need rather than pursuing volume in isolation.
And it should recognise that the support, treatment and retention of current carers directly influence the recruitment of future ones.
This is what it means to treat foster carer recruitment as a system.
The opportunity presented by the 10,000-place ambition
The Government’s commitment creates a rare opportunity to raise national awareness of fostering.
The proposed communications campaign may reach people who have never previously considered it. Regional fostering hubs may create greater consistency and shared expertise. Extending their role across assessment, approval, training and continuing support could help move recruitment from a fragmented collection of activities towards a genuinely end-to-end model. (GOV.UK Assets)
But increased awareness will also test the system.
If a national campaign produces a sudden rise in enquiries, providers must be ready to respond.
They will need sufficient trained recruitment staff.
They will need contact arrangements outside conventional office hours.
They will need assessment capacity.
They will need clear local data.
They will need an applicant journey that is consistent across organisational boundaries.
They will need enough placement support to retain the carers who are approved.
And they will need to know which parts of their current process are already underperforming before additional demand arrives.
The objective is not merely to create 10,000 more entries on an approved-place database.
It is to create sustainable, appropriate and available homes in which children can experience safety, stability and belonging.
That requires marketing.
But it also requires recruitment expertise, operational discipline, assessment capacity, data intelligence, leadership accountability and a serious commitment to retention.
A system problem requires a system response
England’s foster carer shortage cannot be explained by one failing.
It reflects demographic change, housing pressures, the financial realities of fostering, changing family structures, competition between providers, assessment capacity, inconsistent data, the experiences of current carers and the increasing complexity of children’s needs.
The House of Commons Education Committee described recruitment and retention as among the most significant problems affecting foster care. It also highlighted wider concerns about financial support, respect, professional relationships, housing and the availability of suitable carers. (UK Parliament)
There will be no single advertisement, slogan or national campaign that resolves all of those issues.
However, individual providers can understand and improve the parts of the system within their control.
They can become more findable.
They can improve their messaging.
They can respond faster.
They can listen better.
They can simplify unnecessary stages.
They can strengthen handovers.
They can examine withdrawals.
They can nurture future carers.
They can connect recruitment with placement need.
They can support and retain the carers they already have.
The next generation of foster carers will not be recruited by repeating the same campaigns more loudly.
They will be recruited by creating a system that makes it easier to become interested, easier to make an informed decision, easier to progress and more sustainable to remain a foster carer.
Before asking how much more should be spent on advertising, every fostering provider should first be able to answer a more important question:
Where, precisely, are we losing the people who have already expressed an interest in helping a child?
That is where the work must begin.
References
Department for Education and Ipsos. Foster Carer Recruitment and Conversion Rates. Qualitative research examining enquiries, applications, approval, recruitment practices and data quality. (GOV.UK Assets)
Department for Education. Renewing Fostering: Homes for 10,000 More Children. Policy statement and action plan, February 2026. (GOV.UK Assets)
House of Commons Education Committee. Children’s Social Care. Parliamentary report, July 2025. (UK Parliament)
Ofsted. Fostering in England: 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025—Main Findings. Official statistics. (GOV.UK)
Ofsted. Recruitment and Retention in Mainstream Fostering. Analysis of enquiries, applications, approvals, assessment duration and retention. (GOV.UK)
Ofsted. Understanding Children’s Social Care Sufficiency in England. Research on placement availability, local sufficiency, residential provision and workforce pressures. (GOV.UK)
In this publication, I will examine the complete foster carer recruitment journey—from visibility and messaging through enquiry handling, assessment, approval and retention—and consider what the available evidence tells us about where the system must change.