How do you transfer to a different fostering agency?

Most foster carers who ring us about transferring have already been thinking about it for months. They are rarely angry. They are usually tired, and slightly worried that asking the question makes them disloyal. It does not. Here is how a transfer actually works, what the rules say, and the one mistake that causes more trouble than everything else put together.

Please note: this is general information about how transfers work in England, not advice about your own situation. The rules quoted here come from the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 and the Transfer of Foster Carers Protocol (England 2014, reviewed 2019). Weekly fees are South Coast’s own and were checked against our pay page in September 2026.

The short answer

You are allowed to move, and you do not have to explain yourself to anybody. Moving means being assessed again and going to a fostering panel again, which takes a few months rather than a few weeks. If a child is living with you, there is an extra meeting to make sure the move is right for them. And you should not resign from your current service until a new one tells you the timing is right, because resignation runs on a fixed 28 day clock that you cannot pause once it has started.

Nobody can stop you looking

The movement of foster carers between services is covered by a national agreement, the Transfer of Foster Carers Protocol for England, first published in 2014 and reviewed in 2019. It is not law. It is an agreement between the main fostering organisations, written to sit alongside the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011, and it is what services work to. Its first principle is short. “Foster carers have the right to freedom of movement between fostering services.”

Fosterline, the free national advice line for foster carers, summarises the rest of the principles plainly. Services should not coerce or entice carers, and financial factors alone should not decide whether a child moves home. The protocol also says that where a child’s plan is a permanent home, there should be “no undue pressure on foster carers to transfer to another fostering service provider”. That cuts both ways, and it is worth knowing that it exists.

So the question is never whether you are permitted to move. It is whether moving will get you what you are missing.

You are not alone in doing it, either. Ofsted’s figures for the year to 31 March 2025 record 4,430 mainstream fostering households joining a service in England. Of those, 3,050 were new to fostering and 680 had transferred from another fostering service. Roughly one in seven new approvals that year was somebody who had already been fostering somewhere else.

The mistake almost everyone is warned about too late

There is one rule you need before anything else. Under regulation 28(13) of the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011:

“A foster parent may give notice in writing to the fostering service provider at any time that the foster parent no longer wishes to be a foster parent, in which case the foster parent’s approval is terminated with effect from 28 days from the date on which the notice is received by the fostering service provider.”

Twenty eight days, counted from the day your letter lands. There is no provision to withdraw it, and no provision to extend it.

That matters because of a second rule, regulation 27(1) of the same regulations: “A fostering service provider must not approve a person who has been approved as a foster parent by another fostering service provider where that approval has not been terminated.”

Read those two together and the trap is obvious. You cannot hold two approvals at once, so you have to resign from the old service before the new one can approve you. But a new service needs two to three months to assess you and get you to panel. Resign on day one and your approval ends on day 28, months before anyone else can approve you. You are then not an approved foster carer at all, and if a child is living with you, they have to move.

So the order is: talk to a new service first, get assessed, and resign only when the new service tells you their panel date is fixed. Our own transfer page puts it in one line, and it is the single most useful sentence on it: never formally resign as a foster carer before speaking to a new agency.

Telling your current service is different from resigning. The protocol expects you to do it, and expects it in writing: “The foster carer should inform their current fostering service in writing that they are considering a move to another fostering service.” That letter is not a resignation. It starts the process, it does not start the clock.

If nobody is living with you at the moment

This is the simpler version. Once you have told your current service in writing that you are considering a move, the new service can begin its assessment straight away.

It will feel familiar, because it is close to what you did the first time:

• fresh background checks, including an enhanced DBS
• health and personal references
• a social worker visiting you at home and going through your fostering experience in some detail
• a report to a fostering panel, and a decision

What makes it quicker than a first assessment is that most of the material already exists. Your training record, your annual reviews and the log of children you have cared for are all written down somewhere. They need updating and checking rather than building from nothing.

The new service will ask your current one for a written reference and for access to your records. The protocol sets a deadline for that: the current service must provide the records “within 15 working days of request”. If your relationship with your current service has soured, that is often the part people dread. More on it below.

If a child is living with you

This is where the extra step comes in, and it exists for the child rather than for the agencies. The protocol’s overriding principle is that “the welfare of any child in placement is paramount”.

Once your intention is known, the local authority responsible for the child has to tell the child’s independent reviewing officer, and then “shall, within 28-days, convene a meeting”. People usually call it the transfer protocol meeting. Round the table you would expect:

• the local authority placing the child, and the authority responsible for them
• your current fostering service
• the service you want to move to
• you

The meeting is not a hearing and you are not on trial. It exists to work out one thing: whether the child stays with you through the move, and what everyone has to do to make that happen safely. The protocol lists what it must consider, including any decisions made at the child’s most recent review, how the move might affect each child, the support you and the child will need, and the views of the child and their parents.

In practice most children stay exactly where they are and only the name on the paperwork changes. Where a review does decide the arrangement should not continue, the protocol says the move should happen on a timescale driven by the child’s needs, and that it “would normally be completed within three months”.

How long the whole thing takes

Three different timescales get quoted at carers, so it is worth separating them.

The protocol expects the new service’s assessment and any required training to be finished “within two to four months of the meeting”, and it expects a fostering panel to make its recommendation “within eight months of receipt of their application”. That eight months is a long stop, not a target.

Our own target is two to three months. That is the realistic figure for a carer with a current approval, a clean record and no complications. Add time if you have moved house recently, if there is an open investigation, or if a reference is slow coming back.

What if my file says something I disagree with?

This worries people more than any other part of it, and often it is the reason they have put off ringing anybody for a year.

Two things are worth saying. The first is that a reference is one document among many. A transfer assessment involves a social worker spending hours with you, going through your experience in your own words, and forming their own view. A single sour paragraph from a supervising social worker you fell out with does not decide the outcome.

The second is that we would rather hear about it from you first. If there has been an allegation, a complaint, a standards of care concern or simply a relationship that broke down badly, tell us at the informal conversation stage. What an assessing social worker is looking for is not a spotless history. It is whether you can describe what happened, what you took from it, and what you would do differently. Carers who can do that read as professional. Carers who leave it to be discovered do not.

Is it definitely the agency?

We would rather you moved for a good reason than moved because it was Tuesday and you had had enough.

If the problem is support, say so out loud to your current service before you go anywhere. Put it in writing if you can. Some services genuinely do not know a carer is struggling until they are told, and a request that gets refused is at least a clear answer. It is worth reading what good support looks like day to day so you know what you are asking for.

If the problem is your supervising social worker rather than the service, ask for a different one. It is a normal request, it happens regularly, and it sometimes fixes the whole thing without a transfer at all.

If the problem is that you are approved and sitting empty, that is a different matter, and a fair reason to look elsewhere. An approved carer with no child to care for is a failure on the agency’s part, not the carer’s. It is also worth checking whether the service offers the kinds of fostering you actually want to do, because a mismatch there is a common reason carers sit waiting.

And if you have already tried all of that and nothing changed, then you have your answer, and you should not feel bad about acting on it.

What to actually compare

If you are going to go through a few months of assessment, compare properly rather than on the weekly rate alone. The things that turn out to matter a year later:

• how many children the service actually places, and how often carers sit empty
• who you can reach at three in the morning, and whether it is a person or an answerphone
• how many carers each supervising social worker is responsible for
• what training is offered after your first year, not just before approval
• what is paid on top of the weekly fee, and what is deducted from it
• whether more than one child in the house reduces what you receive per child

For what it is worth, here is where South Coast sits. Our weekly fee is £479.50 for a child aged 10 and under and £507.50 for a child aged 11 and over, paid per child as a single figure combining the allowance and your professional fee. We make a monthly contribution towards council tax on top of that, and we do not reduce the fee when brothers and sisters are placed together. Parent and child care is paid at £987 a week. There is more detail on our foster carer pay page, and a fuller explanation in our article on how foster carer pay works in Southern England.

Money is not the reason to move, and the transfer protocol is explicit that it should not decide where a child lives. But you are running a household on this, and you are entitled to know the numbers before you commit to a process that takes a season to finish.

You will not have to do this alone

Sally, our registered manager, was a foster carer herself before she managed a service, which is why the first conversation about transferring here is a conversation rather than an application. You can ask her what happens next, what we would need from your current service, and what your realistic timescale looks like, without committing to anything at all.

We have had carers join us who were within a few weeks of stopping altogether. Several of them are still fostering years later. That is the part that tends to get lost in a discussion about protocols and panel dates: a carer who stays is a child who does not have to move again.

A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance.

Frequently asked questions

Can my current agency stop me transferring?

No. The national transfer protocol states that foster carers have the right to freedom of movement between fostering services. What your current service can do is take part in the transfer meeting where a child is living with you, and give a reference. It cannot refuse permission for you to move.

Do I have to resign before I apply to a new agency?

No, and you should not. Under regulation 28(13) of the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011 your approval ends 28 days after your written resignation is received, and it cannot be paused. Tell your current service in writing that you are considering a move, then resign only once the new service has confirmed its panel date.

Can I transfer with a child living with me?

Usually yes. The local authority responsible for the child must convene a transfer meeting within 28 days, and that meeting decides whether the child stays with you through the move. Most do. The protocol puts the child’s welfare first, so the meeting looks at their plan and their views before anything else.

How long does transferring take?

South Coast works to two to three months from first conversation to panel. The national protocol expects assessment and training to be completed within two to four months of the transfer meeting, with panel making its recommendation within eight months of the application at the outside.

Will I have to do the whole assessment again?

You will be assessed again and go to panel again, because a new approval is a new approval in law. It is quicker than a first assessment because your training record, reviews and fostering history already exist and are being updated rather than created.

Will my new agency see my file?

Yes. Your new service must request a written reference from your current one, and the protocol requires records to be shared within 15 working days of the request. You are entitled to know what is being said about you, and it is far better to raise anything difficult yourself at the first conversation.