Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank both the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) for securing the debate and other Members for their interventions. This is my first opportunity to talk about the fostering action plan in Parliament, so I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me to set out some of the details and to respond to the points she rightly raised.
Since my appointment last September, I have made renewing our fostering system my No. 1 priority as the Minister for Children and Families. Through extensive engagement and discussion, we have pulled together a bold plan, recognising the urgency of the problem that faces us. Earlier this month, we published our action plan, six-week consultation and call for evidence to renew fostering and create 10,000 additional foster care places by the end of this Parliament. We have done this 100 years on from the Adoption of Children Act 1926—the centenary of adoption and fostering as we know it—which created much of the framework that we now work within.
Now is the time to renew our fostering system. Foster care numbers are in decline: the total number has dropped by 12% since 2019, and we face a major demographic challenge because around one third of current carers are over 60, which will compound the problem in the years ahead. There are currently appalling conversion rates and unacceptable delays in approving carers. The 150,000 inquiries made last year only saw 7,300 newly approved foster carers, and 59% of fostering assessments in local authorities take more than six months.
All that is driving pressure on residential care, resulting in children living in residential care settings when they could—and should—be living in family-based homes. There was a 24% increase in children living in residential care between 2020 and 2025, with the number now at over 18,000 children. Yet research looking at children’s needs shows that 45% of children in residential care have the same level of need as those in foster care. The result of that pressure on many foster carers is poor matches, a lack of support and an outdated rulebook that signals a lack of trust and respect. The total impact of all that on our children is that too many are forced to live away from their school, friends and family. There are too many matches that mean they do not get the connections they need, and too many are in residential care when it is not the right fit for them.
The status quo and fostering decline run at complete odds with our wider reforms to children’s social care. It means that we are breaking rather than making lifelong, loving relationships and driving the cost escalator towards ever-expanding residential care, and there is evidence of profiteering. Between 2020 and 2025, spending on residential care doubled to £3.7 billion. Our wider reforms will keep more families safely together and mean greater support for kinship options. They are backed by a major reform programme and £2.4 billion of additional spending. Even with all that, renewing our fostering system demands real focus, national leadership and ambition. I will set out the actions we are taking to give thousands more children in care the choices they need to have the enduring relationships that must become the obsession of the care system.
First, to make sure that the whole of the English system is galvanised by the target that we have set of 10,000 care places, we are renewing local authority fostering teams and expanding fostering hubs that have made meaningful progress to take on the full end-to-end process. We are pushing fostering hubs to take on the whole process rather than just the initial inquiry stage. According to our plans, the majority of local authorities in England this year will recruit and train foster carers in end-to-end hubs. Those hubs will be held to account for rolling out the most effective features of existing hubs, so that we can get the conversion rates up. We will also launch new hubs in the coming weeks.
Further to that, we will create the second wave of regional care co-operatives with greater clarity: they will not simply be commissioning bodies but directly create provision and be tied to fostering hubs. To respond to the points raised around IFAs by the hon. Member for South West Devon, the RCC’s role is in many respects to strike a better relationship with the not-for-profit and profit-making sectors in both fostering and residential care. Throughout the whole process of building the plans I have engaged with independent fostering organisations and will continue to do that. They have value to add into the process and can bring innovation into it. But I want to add a word of caution: there is evidence from Competition and Markets Authority studies that profit-making independent fostering bodies cost more on average than local authority fostering, and it is being done for profit.
With the direction of travel that we have seen the residential care system going in, we are now at a point where about 90% of all residential care is run on a for-profit basis and where the largest companies demonstrate behaviour that amounts to profiteering. I do not want to see that replicated in the fostering system, so we need to grip it before that happens. Market failure will be the result of inaction from the Government in this field, and I will not tolerate that.
All other local authorities that are not in an RCC or a fostering hub will be set stretching targets to approve, and we will set new standards on the process overall. Ofsted will update its inspection framework to hold those local authorities to account. We are also consulting on whether the role of fostering panels for approvals should be changed, and whether that adds value to the process commensurate with the time and cost involved in those fostering panels. We will launch a digital platform to speed up the process. All of that should speed up conversion rates and get more approved carers as soon as possible.