POINT 89/100 — DOES YOUR SUPPORT ACTUALLY FEEL SUPPORTIVE?
POINT 89/100 — DOES YOUR SUPPORT ACTUALLY FEEL SUPPORTIVE?
One phrase appears repeatedly throughout Foster Carer Recruitment:
“You will be supported.”
It appears on websites.
At information events.
During Initial Visits.
During assessment.
During preparation training.
And usually it is offered sincerely.
Fostering services know that Foster Carers need support.
Current National Minimum Standards require it.
But there is a potentially significant difference between:
SUPPORT BEING OFFERED
and:
SUPPORT BEING EXPERIENCED AS SUPPORTIVE.
That difference takes us directly towards Foster Carer retention.
Every organisation can describe its support offer
Ask a fostering service what support it provides and the answer may include:
a Supervising Social Worker;
out-of-hours support;
training;
support groups;
peer networks;
specialist advice;
respite;
management support;
therapeutic services;
and various other arrangements.
That tells us something important.
But it doesn't answer the Foster Carer's question:
“What actually happens when I need help?”
Because support is experienced through moments.
A difficult evening.
A child in distress.
A challenging professional meeting.
A placement beginning to feel unstable.
A Foster Carer's own child struggling.
Exhaustion.
An allegation.
A disagreement.
Or simply the moment when the Foster Carer realises:
“I'm not coping as well as I was.”
That is when the organisational promise gets tested.
The standards are quite clear about support
Current National Minimum Standard 21 is specifically concerned with the supervision and support of Foster Carers.
Among other things, it expects:
Foster Carers to understand the nature and level of support available;
an effective out-of-hours advice and support service;
peer-support opportunities;
appropriate breaks from caring;
and access to adequate social work and other professional support, information and advice.
GOV.UK similarly describes Foster Carer support as including practical, financial and emotional support, out-of-hours advice, support groups, training and opportunities for breaks where needed.
So this is not an argument that support is optional.
The more difficult question is:
DOES THE SUPPORT WORK AS THE FOSTER CARER EXPERIENCES IT?
The 2024 evidence gives us a mixed picture
The Fostering Network's State of the Nations' Foster Care 2024 provides some important evidence.
Three quarters of Foster Carers rated support from their Supervising Social Worker as excellent or good.
That is encouraging.
But other parts of the support system were rated far less strongly.
Only around 35% rated out-of-hours support as excellent or good, down from 43% in 2021.
Less than half had access to an approved support network or person able to provide overnight care.
Almost three in five reported experiencing burnout or poor wellbeing because of fostering.
Perhaps the most revealing finding for Point 89 is this:
Only 48% of Foster Carers said they felt able to ask for support for their wellbeing when they needed it without fear of negative consequences for themselves or the children they fostered.
Think about what that means.
Support may exist.
But a significant proportion of Foster Carers may not feel completely safe using it.
That is not merely a service-availability problem.
It is a trust problem.
SUPPORT AVAILABLE ≠ SUPPORT ACCESSIBLE
A telephone line existing does not necessarily make support accessible.
A Foster Carer might ask:
Will somebody actually answer?
Will they know enough to help?
Will I have to explain everything from the beginning?
Will they simply tell me to speak to somebody on Monday?
Will asking for help make me look incapable?
Will this appear negatively in my review?
Could it affect future matching?
Will professionals think I'm failing?
Those questions influence whether support is actually used.
And this connects directly with Points 85 and 86.
If we taught a new Foster Carer during their first referral that uncertainty is safe, they may later be more willing to say:
“I'm struggling.”
If their experience taught them that concern is interpreted as weakness, they may wait.
The dangerous phrase: “Why didn't you tell us earlier?”
This appears in many professional systems.
A difficulty escalates.
The organisation becomes involved.
Then somebody asks:
“Why didn't you tell us earlier?”
Sometimes that is entirely reasonable.
But we should also ask:
WHAT HAPPENED PREVIOUSLY WHEN THEY DID TELL US SOMETHING WAS WRONG?
Was their concern taken seriously?
Did anything change?
Were they made to feel demanding?
Did they have to repeatedly justify themselves?
Were they reassured without action?
Did the problem disappear into an organisational process?
Or did they learn:
“When I ask for help, somebody helps.”
People learn whether support is safe through experience.
Support should reduce difficulty — not add another task
A Foster Carer contacts the service because they are already under pressure.
The response should not create unnecessary additional work.
Imagine:
“Complete this form.”
“Email another team.”
“You'll need to call somebody else.”
“Can you explain everything again?”
“We can't deal with that until Monday.”
Each step may have an organisational reason.
Collectively, the Foster Carer experiences:
“Getting support is another problem I have to manage.”
That is a warning sign.
SUPPORT SHOULD REDUCE THE LOAD — NOT BECOME PART OF IT.
Timing matters
Support can be technically correct and still arrive too late.
A Foster Carer asks for help on Tuesday.
A response arrives the following week.
The organisation records:
Support provided.
The Foster Carer remembers:
“I was on my own when I needed them.”
This is why measures need to go beyond whether a service exists.
Ask:
How quickly was contact made?
Was the problem understood?
Was immediate advice useful?
Was follow-up arranged?
Did the Foster Carer know what would happen next?
Did the support reduce the concern?
This is experienced support.
Emotional support is not simply being nice
Foster Carers carry considerable emotional responsibility.
They may experience:
worry about children;
uncertainty;
loss;
placement endings;
conflict with professionals;
allegations;
exhaustion;
and distress within their own family.
Supporting them emotionally does not mean removing professional challenge.
It means creating enough trust that difficulty can be spoken about honestly.
The 2024 survey finding that fewer than half felt able to ask for wellbeing support without fear of consequences should therefore concern managers.
Because the question isn't only:
“Do we provide wellbeing support?”
It is:
“DO OUR FOSTER CARERS FEEL SAFE ASKING FOR IT?”
There is a difference between challenge and abandonment
Foster Carers are part of a professional system.
There will be occasions when they need:
challenge;
feedback;
reflection;
accountability;
and difficult conversations.
Support does not mean always agreeing with the Foster Carer.
But challenge can still feel supportive when it is:
fair;
timely;
respectful;
well-explained;
and delivered within a relationship of trust.
A Foster Carer can hear:
“We need to look at this differently.”
without experiencing:
“We're leaving you to deal with this yourself.”
That distinction matters.
The Supervising Social Worker relationship matters enormously
The positive finding in the 2024 survey should not be overlooked.
Approximately three quarters of Foster Carers rated support from their Supervising Social Worker highly, making it one of the strongest-rated sources of support.
That tells us something important.
Relationships matter.
But the same full report also found considerable SSW turnover: only 44% of respondents said they had had one consistent SSW during the previous 24 months.
So another support question is:
Can a Foster Carer access a trusted relationship consistently enough for support to work?
A technically allocated SSW and a strong support relationship are not necessarily the same thing.
The Support Reality Check
I would encourage managers to test support against five very simple questions.
Not:
“Do we provide this?”
But:
1. CAN THEY ASK?
Does the Foster Carer genuinely feel safe saying they need help?
2. CAN THEY REACH SOMEONE?
When support is required, is an appropriate person actually accessible?
3. DO THEY FEEL HEARD?
Does somebody understand what they are asking rather than simply process the contact?
4. DOES SOMETHING HAPPEN?
Does support lead to useful action, advice, intervention or follow-up?
5. DID IT HELP?
The organisation may have completed its action.
Did the Foster Carer actually experience improvement?
That final question is particularly important.
Measure the support experience — not just the support offer
A service dashboard might currently record:
SSW allocation;
supervision frequency;
training attendance;
support-group availability;
out-of-hours provision;
respite availability.
All useful.
I would add:
How confident are Foster Carers asking for help?
How quickly do they receive meaningful responses?
Which support routes do they trust?
Which do they avoid?
What happens after an out-of-hours contact?
What themes appear repeatedly in complaints or supervision?
Which problems are raised late?
Why were they raised late?
What support was promised during recruitment?
Does the post-approval experience match that promise?
These measures begin connecting recruitment directly with retention.
EXPECTATION → EXPERIENCE → TRUST
This may be the simplest model for Point 89.
During recruitment:
EXPECTATION
“We will support you.”
After approval:
EXPERIENCE
“This is what happens when I ask.”
That produces:
TRUST
or:
DISTRUST.
And trust influences what happens next.
EXPECTATION → EXPERIENCE → TRUST → RETENTION RISK
This does not mean one poor phone call causes resignation.
Retention is obviously more complicated.
But repeated gaps between promise and experience can accumulate.
The retention evidence makes support impossible to ignore
The Fostering Network's 2024 survey found three in five Foster Carers had considered or were considering resigning.
Among the most commonly cited reasons were:
lack of support from their fostering service;
lack of respect from other professionals;
and burnout or poor wellbeing associated with fostering.
This does not mean lack of support explains every resignation.
But it does mean support belongs at the centre of any serious retention strategy.
And importantly, the issue is not simply the number of support services listed in a Foster Carer handbook.
It is what Foster Carers experience when they need them.
Ask this question before you design another support initiative
Services under pressure can respond by adding programmes.
Another helpline.
Another group.
Another wellbeing offer.
Another online resource.
Those things may be valuable.
But before adding something else, ask:
WHY AREN'T FOSTER CARERS USING OR TRUSTING WHAT ALREADY EXISTS?
Perhaps access is poor.
Perhaps timings are wrong.
Perhaps staffing changes undermine relationships.
Perhaps Foster Carers worry about judgement.
Perhaps nobody follows up.
Perhaps people simply don't know what support actually does.
Sometimes redesigning the experience may matter more than expanding the offer.
The promise made during recruitment eventually comes due
This is why Point 89 belongs in a Foster Carer Recruitment Review.
Recruitment creates expectations.
We say:
“You will be part of a team.”
“Your SSW will support you.”
“There is always someone there.”
“Ask for help.”
Those statements help people decide whether they can foster.
So after approval, they cannot become merely marketing language.
The organisation eventually has to deliver them.
SUPPORT IS WHERE RECRUITMENT PROMISES MEET FOSTERING REALITY.
And that is precisely where retention begins to become unavoidable.
Because when fostering gets difficult, the Foster Carer's question may no longer be:
“Can I do this?”
It may become:
“Can I keep doing this with the support I'm receiving?”
That is a very different question.
And it takes us directly towards Point 90 — the final Stage Nine review before we move fully into the last ten Points and Foster Carer retention.