Introduction
When children cannot live at home with their parents, or with other family or friends, foster care provides the safety, stability, and belonging they deserve. Most children in care in England live with foster families, who provide secure family environments that help children stay connected to their networks, build lasting relationships, and thrive. Foster carers make a vital contribution to the lives of children who require alternative care, whether in the short or long term. To find the right family a child can trust, there must be a broad and diverse range of foster carers available close to a child’s extended family, friends, school, and community.
The fostering system faces significant challenges, and the government has acknowledged that the fostering system has not kept pace with how families live today. While the number of approved fostering households has been steadily falling, demand continues to grow. There have also been shifts in who is coming into the system and when. Children are entering care at later points, often with multiple needs requiring multi-agency input. A lack of foster families has resulted in children having to go into residential care,1 where they experience worse outcomes than if they were in foster care.2
This Practice Guide was developed during widescale reform to the fostering system. It can be used to support these developments, ensuring future changes are grounded in the best available evidence. For more information about current policy and the relevant frameworks and guidance, read the policy and practice overview.
This Guide is based on findings from a systematic review, which brings together the best available evidence on a specific aspect of fostering: the use of evidence‑based interventions designed to strengthen foster carers’ wellbeing, confidence and skills. These interventions support foster carers to continue to provide children with stable, loving homes, the support they need, and opportunities to maintain connections with their family networks, in line with the outcomes of the Children’s Social Care National Framework.
This Guide has been produced to assist all those with corporate parenting responsibilities across multi-agency partnerships to achieve the outcomes of the National Framework by commissioning, prioritising, and expanding access to evidence-based support for foster carers. This includes senior leaders and commissioners in children’s social care, health, and education, as well as the wider fostering sector, such as voluntary organisations and independent fostering providers. This Guide relates predominantly to Outcome 4 of the Framework: children in care and care leavers have stable, loving homes. It also relates to Outcome 1: families stay together and get the help they need; and Outcome 3: children are supported by their family network.
In addition to evidence on fostering, the systematic review underpinning this Guide also includes evidence on different types of support for adoptive parents. The findings on adoption will be brought together in a separate future Practice Guide. In the meantime, we have published a briefing summarising the key findings.
A note on language
We have been intentional and thoughtful in our use of language and have tested our approach with our fostering advisors. We have aimed to use child‑friendly terminology wherever possible, for example, referring to ‘positive behaviour support’ rather than ‘challenging behaviour management’, and to living ‘with a foster family’ rather than ‘in a placement’. In some instances, however, this has not been possible, and the language used in the evidence is not always our preferred language. Read the extended definitions for more detail.
Scope of this Practice Guide
This Guide predominantly focuses on non-related foster carers offering short- and long-term fostering arrangements. It includes interventions, programmes, and services designed to directly support foster carers.
This Guide does not attempt to cover every component of support that children in care need to thrive. The primary emphasis is on support for foster carers to provide the best possible care to children. Our policy and practice overview outlines other evidence-based guidance to support children in foster care.
Other types of benefits that foster carers receive – such as financial support – are not included because no related evidence was identified in the review. We recognise that adequate financial and material support is essential to enable people to foster, provide loving, stable homes, and ensure that children can flourish.
Read the extended definitions or systematic review for more information.
We would like to acknowledge the invaluable input of our advisers who worked closely alongside our Guidance Writing Advisory Group and whose contributions have greatly enriched this Foundations’ Practice Guide: Lynne Blencowe (Foster Carer); Natalie Bugeja (Achieving for Children); Miles Erys Smith (Advisory group member); Brenda Farrell (Barnardo’s); Emma Fincham (Coram BAAF); Lydia Foster (Barnardo’s); Hannah Foxcroft (The National Association of Fostering Providers); Ellie Johnson, (Coram BAAF); Kathryn McCabe (Together for Children); Natalie C Myle (Foster Carer); Brian Roberts (Foster Carer, Special Guardian and Consultant); Symone Robinson (Foster Carer); Niketa Sanderson-Gillard (Why Care); Bobbie Smith (Foster Carer); Sarah Thomas (Fostering Network); Helen Walker (Foster Carer); Kayleigh Wilshaw (Tact Fostering).
We would also like to thank the research team at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI) and Monash University for their meticulous work on the systematic review.
Key Principles
Key principles help to ensure that accessible, acceptable evidence-based support for foster carers can be effectively implemented. They draw out qualitative evidence on the views, experiences, and preferences of foster carers in the UK on how to engage and work with them. They also cover qualitative evidence on effective design and implementation of interventions for foster carers.
What and why?
Foster carers consistently valued support that brought together different forms of help and built a community around the foster family. Approaches that combined practical advice, opportunities for short breaks, emotional support, and timely referrals to other services were seen by foster carers as efficient and responsive to their needs and those of the child in their care.
They also appreciated support that involved other practitioners and that recognised foster carers as part of a child’s wider support network. When social workers, teachers, health professionals, and other specialists shared information and contributed directly to the support provided, carers gained access to a richer range of expertise and practical guidance.
Carers highlighted the value of involving the whole foster family in support. Our Fostering Advisors for this Practice Guide strongly reinforced the need for a whole-family approach, rather than a focus solely on the child in care or the foster carer(s).
Flexible, well-matched short break packages were described as especially beneficial, giving carers time for themselves, and offering children opportunities to build relationships and enjoy new experiences. These breaks could be arranged informally through carers’ networks, supported by delegated authority, or provided through more structured services, such as youth activities, sitting services, or overnight stays.
Our advisors also highlighted that financial support is a crucial element of fostering offers. Ensuring that foster carers can meet a child’s basic needs and provide enriching opportunities was seen as essential for sustainable, high-quality care. Although no evidence on the impact of financial allowances on foster carer and child outcomes was identified in the review, there is evidence of allowances having a positive effect on outcomes for kinship carers and children in kinship care. These include reduced likelihood of placement disruption, and improved likelihood of placement permanency.7
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Commission a broad range of support for foster families, including practical advice, help with access to financial support, benefits, and links to peer support
- Develop flexible short breaks packages for foster families
- Use multi‑disciplinary input to assess the needs of children in care and foster families, ensuring services are designed to meet their specific needs
- Ensure there are clear support pathways so foster families can access appropriate services quickly
- Create the conditions for effective collaboration between key adults in a child’s life to help share the care and enable effective information sharing and timely responses to emerging needs.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should:
- Provide key people in foster carers’ wider support networks with the information and training needed to share responsibility for meeting the child’s needs
- Where appropriate and in the best interests of the child, work with foster families and the children in their care to identify a support network to help care for the child. This could be people within the foster carer’s or the child’s existing network or approved short-breaks carers.
What and why?
Foster carers get the most out of support when it is delivered by those who are empathetic, open, and warm, and when they feel that their own knowledge and expertise are valued.
Foster carers value the perceived empathy of a practitioner, feeling that open, authentic, and encouraging practitioners were most useful. For some foster carers, perceived empathy was more highly valued than skills and knowledge. Using peer facilitators – alone or alongside a non-peer facilitator – was received well by foster carers and reportedly helped to build trust and empathy with carers due to shared lived experience.
Foster carers also appreciated when individuals providing support approached them as equal partners. When making decisions about a child in care, tensions between a child’s social worker, their wider family, the foster carer, and the supervising social worker can be challenging and lead to foster carers feeling disempowered, despite often knowing the child best. When the foster carer role is valued by the wider fostering system, foster carers can feel more empowered to advocate for the needs and wishes of the children in their care.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Ensure strengths‑based, relational approaches are used when supporting foster families and when designing and delivering support and training
- Prioritise support that approaches foster carers as equal partners, recognising their skills and valuing their expertise
- Provide foster carers with opportunities for peer-facilitated support and mentoring.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should:
- Provide support to foster carers with warmth, passion, and empathy
- Recognise and value foster carers’ knowledge and expertise, and treat them as equal partners
- Support foster carers to become peer facilitators and mentors, particularly those from underrepresented groups, such as male foster carers, people with minoritised ethnic backgrounds, and people from the LGBTQ+ community.
What and why?
Regular opportunities for peer support facilitated by either a social worker or a foster carer was felt by foster carers to enhance their emotional wellbeing. Foster carers see each other as valuable sources of support, drawing on shared experiences and practical insights from people who truly understand the realities of fostering.
Foster carers appreciated group-based peer support where the children in their care were also welcome. Foster carers say they need opportunities for support where they feel accepted and where there is an understanding and awareness of fostering, and the needs of children in foster care. This is particularly the case when supporting a child who is experiencing distress. Children in foster care also appreciate the ‘family-like’ feeling of group-based support where they can connect with other children in similar situations.
How?
Senior leaders should provide a diverse range of peer support opportunities for foster carers, including those with provision for the children in their care.
Supervising social workers, other practitioners, and practice supervisors should actively promote opportunities for facilitated peer support and encourage foster carers to take up facilitator roles.
What and why?
Foster carers frequently reported that support for self‑care was often missing from the help they received, yet it was greatly valued when included.
Foster carers often hold and absorb the emotions of children they care for. Over time, this can affect foster carers’ ability to cope, and influence how they respond to challenging situations. Supporting carers to attend to their own needs is essential to enable them to provide safe, consistent care, and to sustain high-quality, stable relationships with the children they care for.
Foster carers valued opportunities to reflect on their experiences and the emotional responsibilities of fostering, but finding time and space for this can be difficult while balancing children’s needs, meetings, and other daily responsibilities. Access to short breaks – where in the child’s best interests – can contribute to sustained wellbeing by offering carers a chance to step back, gain perspective, and recharge.
Practical advice and tools to support self‑care can be delivered through specific modules within training programmes or embedded across the wider support offer. Evidence highlights several helpful approaches, including:
- Relaxation and mindfulness techniques to recognise and regulate feelings
- Finding and implementing solutions to difficult caregiving situations
- Techniques for strengthening social support networks
- Building routines and planning for the future
- Being aware and taking care of foster carer’s own physical and emotional health.
Although carers valued information about self‑care, self-care is rarely effective on its own. A diverse range of coordinated and accessible support is essential.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Offer accessible support that recognises the importance of foster carers own mental health and self-care practices available and accessible
- Equip the workforce to use strengths-based, relational approaches when supporting foster families, to improve their emotional wellbeing.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should:
- Support foster carers’ wellbeing by actively exploring their needs and how these could be met. This may include providing time and space for reflection individually, at peer support networks, or during their induction, at annual reviews, or during regular supervisory sessions
- Provide information and practical advice on self-care to foster carers to ensure they have sufficient emotional capacity for their role
- Use strengths-based, relational approaches when supporting foster families, including focusing on carers’ strengths and aspirations, exploring their support networks and identifying practical ways to make time for self-care.
What and why?
Equipping foster carers with the tools and skills to pause and reflect is central to effective, responsive caregiving and a stronger carer—child relationship. Attuned caregiving helps children feel safe and supported, contributing to a warm, nurturing home environment.
Several practical tools were identified in the review which can support foster carers to respond positively to children in their care, including emotional thermometers and ‘mind checks’. See Recommendation 6 for further examples.
Foster carers found support and training sessions most helpful when these practical tools were combined with evidence-based education on trauma, child development, and attachment. Learning about how early experiences shape behaviour was perceived to help carers to develop a more nuanced understanding of children’s actions – for example, recognising responses as a survival mechanism rather than intentional defiance. Foster carers felt that these insights increased their empathy for the child in their care and strengthened their ability to respond sensitively. In turn, this improved attunement helps children feel more secure and supports them to regulate their own emotions. While foster carers found this learning helpful, it is important that theories about trauma and attachment are used carefully to avoid defining children in care by their past experiences.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Commission evidence-based training on trauma, attachment, and child development which includes practical tools to help foster carers respond positively to children in their care
- Embed training on the latest developments in children’s social care and child development into ongoing practitioner training programmes, with a focus on recognising and responding to children’s evolving needs, including additional or complex needs.
Supervising social workers, other practitioners and practice supervisors should focus on building their own understanding of relevant theories, as well as the latest developments in children’s social care and child development.
What and why?
Foster carers value structured support that reflects the unique experiences and responsibilities of their role. They provide round-the-clock care for (a) child/ren in their own home, while navigating complex responsibilities, delegated authority between the local authority and – where applicable – the child’s parents or carers, and the expectations of multiple professionals (e.g. children’s social workers and independent reviewing officers). Because of these demands, universal or generic parenting support does not always meet foster carers’ needs. Support should be adapted to be relevant to the specific challenges of fostering.
The fostering experience is also highly varied. Foster carers may support children with a range of experiences and needs, such as trauma, loss, multiple moves, specific cultural needs, and/or developmental needs. Approaches that acknowledge this diversity help ensure that learning is relevant, meaningful, and applicable to foster carers’ realities.
Additionally, offering flexibility, while retaining a clear structure, ensures that support remains both evidence-informed and responsive to individual need. Tailoring the content of support can be challenging when there is significant diversity within a group – for example, in fostering experience or children’s ages. Some foster carers preferred group-based support with carers who shared similar experiences. Others valued more diverse groups, feeling that they learned more from a wider range of perspectives.
How?
Senior leaders should commission support for foster carers which can speak to individual challenges and the requirements of the role. This might include support to care for children from a different cultural background or of different ages and developmental stages; to manage family time; or support on harms outside the home.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should offer flexibility within structured content to respond to the specific needs, questions, and experiences of foster carers. For example, allowing group‑based discussions to shape the direction of travel and tailor support in real-time, making space for the diverse experiences foster carers bring.
What and why?
High-quality recruitment of approved foster carers into support programmes relies on providing clear, accessible information, having a good understanding of the carers’ needs, and using strengths-based, opportunity-focused framing. Effective recruitment can enable programme success.
Clear information about the support offered is key to ensuring a good fit between the needs of foster carers and programme aims. This should include transparent eligibility criteria, with clarity about where flexibility may be applied. When foster carers are not given the right information from the start, they report being more likely to disengage or drop out, meaning the support is less likely to deliver the intended outcomes.
Sometimes the people responsible for referring foster carers for support – which can include social workers, local authority staff, administrators, trainers, or researchers – are not the same people who deliver the support. This can create gaps in understanding. Strong communication between referrers and support providers is vital to create a shared understanding of both the intervention and foster families’ needs, ensuring that support feels relevant and worthwhile to foster carers.
Social worker and fostering service endorsement, or active involvement in support, tended to increase foster carers’ uptake and engagement. This helped carers prioritise attendance and engage fully, which in turn meant that support was more likely to deliver the intended outcomes. Word-of-mouth recommendations from other foster carers also strengthened foster carers’ engagement with support.
The evidence found a lack of diversity in foster carers participating in support or training. Efforts should be made to reach underrepresented carers – such as male carers, carers from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, and LGBTQ+ carers – and encourage them to take on peer facilitator or mentoring roles where appropriate, which can encourage the participation of other underrepresented carers.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Utilise social workers and other local authority staff to endorse support and training opportunities for foster carers
- Champion a strengths‑based culture and shape the support offer around this approach
- Build local capacity to drive forward equality, diversity, inclusion, and equity (EDIE) efforts, such as involving EDIE leads and analysts who can provide a deeper understanding of how the support offer is working for underrepresented foster carers.
Supervising social workers, other practitioners, and practice supervisors should:
- Have a good understanding of the aims and benefits of the support offer to ensure carers are referred appropriately and provided with the right information
- Adopt a strengths-based and personalised approach when engaging foster carers with support – for example, framing their participation as an opportunity to build on existing strengths or learn new skills, rather than as mandatory or a form of remediation
- Support underrepresented foster carers to engage with support and training – this could include buddying or mentoring schemes to support inclusion and create safer spaces for engagement; taking a flexible approach to encourage carer participation; allowing for different delivery modes (e.g. one-to-one, online, and in-person); and ensuring content is inclusive, culturally sensitive, and responsive.
What and why?
Foster carers appreciated opportunities to deepen their theoretical knowledge, for example, on topics such as social pedagogy, attachment, and child development, if this was paired with practical strategies that they could practice in the session or at home and there was sufficient time between sessions to practise and reflect. Ways of putting theory into practice identified in the evidence included role-play in sessions, exploring and discussing this within a foster carer’s supervisory sessions or in group-based discussion, and reflection on practice.
Advisors shared that when using these theories in day‑to‑day care, it is important that foster carers introduce them in a natural and child‑centred way. They should ensure children do not feel observed or ‘tested’, but instead experience new approaches as part of supportive, attuned caregiving.
Foster carers can often be practising new strategies in times of crisis, which can be challenging. Where possible, foster carers should be provided with timely access to relevant, well-matched, and responsive evidence-based support and training that adopts an early intervention approach.
Advisors also shared that it can be difficult to put theory into practice when there is instability in the team around the child. For example, frequent changes in children’s social workers can make it harder for foster carers to apply consistent strategies, particularly when varying levels of autonomy or guidance are provided.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Commission and design services that provide opportunities for foster carers to develop their theoretical knowledge and that support them to put this into practice.
- Address barriers that may prevent foster carers from putting learning into practice. For example, by working strategically across the corporate parenting partnership to develop a workforce that supports and facilitates consistent care planning practices that address all areas of a child’s life, and by promoting close collaboration between health, education, social care, and voluntary sector partners.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should ensure that foster carers have space to reflect on and implement skills and tools from evidence-based support or training as part of their ongoing learning and development. This should include through access to group-based discussions with other carers.
Recommendations
Recommendations summarise the best-evidenced support and training for improving outcomes for foster carers and the children in their care.
What and why?
There is strong evidence that support at multiple levels – individual, group, and system – can lead to improvements, including in child behaviour, wellbeing, and placement stability. Multi-level support has demonstrated both immediate and longer-term impact for children aged 2 to 17 with varied needs.
Multi-level approaches offer a broad framework to address the breadth of interconnected needs of foster families. This type of support may weave together different approaches or offer multiple discrete interventions. It often focuses on both children and carers, supporting the development of aligned skills. Though effective, these interventions don’t cover the full range of support that children in care may need.
Working at both the individual and group-level can provide foster carers with one-to-one support tailored to their family’s needs, while connecting them with peers who understand the realities of fostering. Combining group-based and system-level approaches can create a structured support network, including both professional and peer input. System-level support focuses on the structures and resources surrounding foster families, including training for practitioners which supports consistency across the system.
How?
Senior leaders should ensure that evidence-based multi-level support is accessible to foster carers.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should:
- Provide support that combines individual, group, and system-level approaches to address challenges across multiple areas of foster carers’ lives (See Key Principle 1 for more information)
- Support carer’s needs, recognising they are key to children’s outcomes (See Key Principle 4 for more information).
Intervention example
Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) has been adapted for foster carers (of children aged 2 to 7 with behavioural needs) to include group training over two to three days. It involves two phases – Child-Directed Interaction and Parent-Directed Interaction – and includes a rotation of coached interactions. One-to-one phone consultations follow for 8–14 weeks. See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is strong evidence that foster carer training on positive behaviour support can improve children’s behavioural outcomes. The goal is not to eliminate behaviours sometimes perceived as challenging but to support children so their behaviour reflects improved wellbeing. This approach has shown effectiveness with children aged 2 to 17 with high behavioural and emotional needs, delivering immediate improvements, some of which were sustained at 12 months.
Behaviours that carers can find challenging may be a child’s adaptive response from previous adversity, or a way of communicating distress or dysregulation. When these behaviours are not fully understood or supported, this can strain the carer–child relationship and increase the risk of placement instability. Positive behaviour support helps foster carers recognise behaviour as communication and equips them with skills to respond to children’s underlying needs.
Although these approaches have proven effective, they won’t suit every child or situation – for example, some neurodivergent children may benefit from different approaches. Support should be tailored to each foster families’ unique needs.
How?
Senior leaders should ensure foster carers have access to evidence‑based training that builds understanding of behaviour and develops skills to sensitively respond.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should support foster carers to strengthen the relational foundations that promote positive behaviour change by supporting:
- Skills to increase positive interactions, such as praise and effective instructions
- Consistent responses that reduce escalation, including predictable follow-through on limits
- Clear expectations and routines so children understand what is required of them
- Skills practice through active teaching approaches (See Key Principle 8 for more information).
Intervention example
Fostering Changes involves 12 weekly three-hour group sessions for foster carers of children aged 2+. It focuses on strengthening relationships and promoting positive behaviour and learning through supporting understanding of behaviour and developing practical caregiving and self-care skills. See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is good evidence that training on foster carer–child interactions that support consistent routines and expectations can improve children’s development and wellbeing. This includes improvements in social, emotional, and behavioural adjustment, regulation, sleep, self-esteem, and literacy. This approach has proven effective for children with high behavioural and emotional needs from 2 to 17 years old in the short term, with some longer-term effects found.
Although early adversity can influence developmental pathways, support can help children to strengthen their social, emotional, and behavioural adjustment. This relates to children’s abilities to understand, regulate, and express emotions, build relationships, and manage routines – key skills required for children to thrive. Predictable routines and expectations reduce uncertainty (which can cause stress for children), promote stability and security, and enable children to focus on learning and other activities. This is particularly important for those who have experienced disruption or instability.
When carers are assisted to strengthen interactions and use predictable routines and expectations, children show improvements in adjustment, functioning, and wellbeing. This can support daily transitions (e.g. bedtime), as well as larger ones (e.g. school or home moves).
How?
Senior leaders should ensure foster carers have access to evidence‑based training that builds practical skills for positive, consistent interactions with children.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should support foster carers to:
- Promote predictability through clear and consistent routines and expectations
- Use practical skills to respond to children in ways that reduce escalation and support adjustment – for example, by modelling calmness and naming emotions
- Increase positive interactions to strengthen relationships and emotional security, including by using positive reinforcement and praise
- Support children’s developmental foundations by promoting regulation, school readiness, functional skills, and sleep routines
- Apply learning between sessions (See Key Principle 8).
Intervention example
See Recommendation 2 for a short summary of Fostering Changes. See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is good evidence that foster carer training that includes both self-care and positive behaviour skills can improve carer wellbeing, including stress levels and coping strategies. This approach has proven effective for foster carers of children up to the age of 17 with high behavioural and emotional needs in the short term. Research is needed on longer-term outcomes.
Helping foster carers to effectively sustain their wellbeing can enable them to remain in their roles and provide the stable, nurturing homes that promote positive outcomes for children. While wider systemic factors also shape carer wellbeing, combining self-care and positive behaviour approaches helps foster carers to feel better equipped and more able to cope, strengthening capacity to provide sensitive care. Reductions in stress can occur even when child behaviour improvements are modest, suggesting training helps carers to reframe behaviour and feel challenges are more manageable.
How?
Senior leaders should ensure that evidence-based training is available to foster carers that combines self-care and positive child behaviour support.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should:
- Equip foster carers with positive behaviour skills, including positive reinforcement, observing behaviour, clear instructions, and predictable boundaries, to reduce stress
- Empower foster carers to apply positive behaviour strategies by using active teaching methods (see Key Principle 8)
- Strengthen foster carers’ coping strategies and self-care skills. including by providing space to reflect and techniques to observe and regulate their own emotions (see Key Principle 4).
Intervention example
See Recommendation 2 for a short summary of Fostering Changes. See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is good evidence that group-based foster carer training on positive behaviour support can improve placement stability and permanence over one to two years for pre-adolescent children (2 to 12 years old), including children with high behavioural needs.
Children in foster care may display behaviours shaped by previous adversity. When their behaviour is not well understood or supported, this can contribute to which can disrupt a child’s relationships, routines, and sense of security.
Strengthening foster carers’ skills and confidence to respond calmly and consistently during difficult moments can help them to meet children’s needs. This promotes regulated emotions and secure relationships, de-escalating situations that may otherwise contribute to unplanned endings to fostering arrangements.
This type of training is typically offered in group settings, which can provide space for group reflection, shared problem-solving and learning from others’ experiences. This can help to normalise challenges and reduce isolation while helping carers to feel recognised, valued, and encouraged. In turn, this can strengthen their capacity to provide stable nurturing care.
How?
Senior leaders should ensure that foster carers have access to evidence-based group training on positive behaviour support.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should support foster carers to:
- Develop and use practical skills that reduce escalation and promote positive behaviour, including clear instructions, predictable boundaries, verbal reflection, and following the child’s lead
- Help children to regulate their emotions by modelling calm responses and positively reinforcing regulated behaviour
- Engage in group training to access peer support and shared learning
- Address everyday challenges by tailoring support and providing follow-up guidance to embed learning and build confidence.
Intervention example
See Recommendation 1 for a short summary of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is good evidence that relationship-focused training for foster carers can improve the quality of carer–child interactions and relationships with children up to 12 years old up to three months after the training. Further research is needed to assess longer-term outcomes.
Previous adversity can influence how children relate to adults, sometimes in ways that require carers to pay close attention to their emotional and behavioural cues. Effective support can help foster carers to understand these signals, as well as how their own responses shape children’s behaviour. This supports carers to sensitively respond to children’s needs, increasing trust and connection. Providing carers with techniques to support their own wellbeing and emotional regulation can increase their capacity to remain warm, calm, and attuned during challenging moments. Secure relationships can, in turn, promote children’s resilience, positive behaviour, and overall wellbeing.
How?
Senior leaders should ensure evidence-based training is available to foster carers that supports connection and attunement with the children in their care.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should help foster carers to:
- Observe, interpret, and understand children’s emotions and behaviour, including by using reflective discussion to help carers to recognise interaction patterns and children’s cues
- Respond to children sensitively and predictably to create emotional safety – for example, by following the child’s lead
- Support children’s emotional regulation, helping them to name feelings, manage distress, and recover from difficult moments
- Regulate their own emotions, enhancing their capacity to remain calm and responsive when children are dysregulated, including through reflection and problem-solving
- Apply learning at home, supporting them to embed attuned, sensitive caregiving (see Key Principle 8).
Intervention example: See Recommendation 2 for a short summary of Fostering Changes. See the full intervention summary.
What and why?
There is promising evidence that interventions that build support networks for foster carers can improve retention, as shown through reduced de-registrations over a three-year period.
To help foster carers to continue in their vital role, it is essential to strengthen the support that helps them to thrive. This includes peer and community networks, material and practical assistance, short breaks (where in the child’s interests), and positive relationships with key people in the child’s life. Creating a supportive environment and a community around foster families helps carers to feel valued, equipped, and connected, increasing the sustainability of the fostering role.
How?
Senior leaders should:
- Provide foster carers with access to peer networks that promote connection and community, including those with provision for children (see Key principle 3 for more information)
- Create inclusive and accessible support networks to accommodate varying needs
- Enable foster carers to access short breaks, where appropriate, through a trusted central hub carer or a family’s existing connections to provide carers with protected time and children with alternative positive experiences
- Consider the local context when deciding on support models, particularly the number and geographical spread of foster carers
- Champion a supportive culture where foster carers’ expertise is recognised and they are treated as equal partners in the team around the child.
Supervising social workers and other practitioners should explore foster carers’ existing support networks and their preferences for support, recognising that carers vary in how they wish to connect.
Intervention example
The Mockingbird Home Hub Model brings together 6 to 10 foster families around an experienced Hub Home foster carer, offering sleepovers, peer support, training, and social activities. Further research is needed on the impact of this model on child outcomes. See the full intervention summary.
Resources
Quick Guide
Summary for Elected Members
Systematic review
Evidence annex
Technical annex on methodology
Evidence Ratings and summary
This rating is given if: the evidence is from a meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a method of synthesis that combines the results of multiple quantitative studies addressing a common research question. A meta-analysis can be used to assess the effectiveness of an intervention or programme. or a narrative synthesis
Narrative synthesis is an approach for analysing and summarising results from multiple studies using texts and words, and helps to provide an overall assessment of the strength of the evidence about the effectiveness of a specific intervention(s). of at least two randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trials or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. studies that were conducted in the UK or comparable high-income country; and have scored low on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with a minimum sample size of 20 in each group (the intervention and comparison group); and demonstrates effectiveness of the intervention(s).
This rating is given if: the evidence is from a meta-analysis
A meta-analysis is a method of synthesis that combines the results of multiple quantitative studies addressing a common research question. A meta-analysis can be used to assess the effectiveness of an intervention or programme. or a narrative synthesis
Narrative synthesis is an approach for analysing and summarising results from multiple studies using texts and words, and helps to provide an overall assessment of the strength of the evidence about the effectiveness of a specific intervention(s). of at least two randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trials and/or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. studies that were conducted in the UK or a comparable high-income country; and have scored at least moderate on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with at least 20 participants in the intervention group and less or more than 20 participants in the comparison group; and demonstrates efficacy of the intervention(s).
This rating is given if: the evidence is from one randomised controlled
A study design used to evaluate the impact of an intervention on target populations by assigning participants to one of two groups: the intervention/experimental group (i.e., the group receiving the intervention that is being evaluated), and the control or comparison group (i.e., the group receiving an alternative intervention or no intervention). trial or quasi-experimental
A study design used to evaluate the causal impact of an intervention on target populations without random assignment of participants to intervention and control groups. study that was conducted in the UK or a comparable high-income country; and has scored low or moderate on risk of bias assessment
As part of the systematic review process, the quality of each study included in the review is assessed using tools such as the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. This helps researchers to understand whether the methods used in the study are transparent. Checking the transparency of the methods used allows researchers to judge the trustworthiness, reliability and relevance of the findings from each study., with less or more than 20 participants in each group (the intervention and comparison group); and demonstrates efficacy of the intervention(s).
Recommendation
Rating
1 Office for Standards in Education [Ofsted]. (2022) Why do children go into children’s homes? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/why-do-children-go-into-childrens-homes/why-do-children-go-into-childrens-homes
2 Sacker, A., Murray, E., Lacey, R. & Maughan, B. (2021) The lifelong health and wellbeing trajectories of people who have been in care. University College London. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10155700/1/Sacker%20A%202021_Report_The-lifelong-health-and-wellbeing-trajectories-of-people-who-have-been-in-care.pdf
3 Ahmed, N., James, D., Tayabali, A. & Watson, M. (2022) Ethnicity and children’s social care. Department for Education. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/628666598fa8f556165a1e4b/Ethnicity_and_childrens_social_care.pdf
4 Department for Education [DfE]. (2025) Children looked after in England including adoptions, Reporting year 2025 – Explore education statistics
5 Office for Standards in Education [Ofsted]. (2025) Fostering in England 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fostering-in-england-1-april-2024-to-31-march-2025
6 Ott, E., Wills, E., Hall, A. & Gupta, S. (2023) Foster carer recruitment and retention in England. Centre for Evidence and Implementation and The Fostering Network. https://www.ceiglobal.org/sites/default/files/uploads/files/CEI_Report_Foster_Carer_Retention_and_Recruitment_May2023.pdf
7 Foundations – What Works Centre for Children & Families. (2024) Kinship Care Practice Guide. https://foundations.org.uk/toolkit/practice-guides/kinship-care/#recommendations
