What do foster carers have to write down?

Most people who ask us about record keeping are worried about two things. They are worried it will be endless, and they are worried they will get it wrong. Neither turns out to be true. Here is what foster carers actually write down, why it matters more than it looks, and the one habit that makes the rest of it easy.

Please note: this is general information about recording in foster care in England, not guidance about your own fostering service. The requirements quoted here come from the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards, the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 and the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011, checked in September 2026. Your own service’s recording policy is the document that governs what you do day to day.

The short answer

You keep a short, dated note of how each child’s day went, and you send it to your fostering service in the way they ask for. Most carers write it in ten minutes at the end of the evening. It is not an essay, and nobody is marking your spelling.

What makes it worth doing properly is who reads it afterwards. Your supervising social worker reads it regularly. The child’s social worker uses it to make decisions about where that child lives and what help they get. A court may read it. And years from now, the child themselves may sit down and read what you wrote, because for some children these notes are the only written account of that part of their life.

Why the records exist at all

The National Minimum Standards for fostering services in England set out what a fostering service has to do, and Ofsted inspects against them. Standard 26 covers records, and its stated outcome is short enough to quote in full:

“Records are clear, up to date, stored securely and contribute to an understanding of the child’s life.”

That last phrase is doing most of the work. Your notes are not a compliance exercise with the child mentioned in passing. They are a record of a child’s life, kept by the person who was there.

In practice they get used in four ways.

They tell the team what is actually happening. A social worker who visits once every few weeks sees a snapshot. You see the mornings, the bad nights and the week the sleeping settled down. Your notes are how that gets into the decisions.

They become evidence when a court is deciding a child’s future. Family courts routinely read foster carers’ records when they are working out whether a child can safely go back to live with their family. What you wrote on an ordinary Tuesday in March can carry real weight.

They protect you. If an allegation is ever made, a dated, factual record written at the time is worth more than anyone’s memory of the same evening. That is one of the quieter reasons experienced carers keep them properly.

They become part of the child’s own story. Children in care often do life story work, piecing together where they were and who was looking after them. Sometimes your notes are the only source for a whole year.

What the standards actually ask of you

Standard 26 sets out a handful of requirements, and two of them are the ones you will feel day to day.

Standard 26.5 says that entries “are legible, clearly expressed, non-stigmatising, distinguish between fact, opinion and third party information and are signed and dated”. In plain terms: date it, stick to what actually happened, and never write anything you would be uncomfortable reading aloud to the child it describes.

Standard 26.1 requires your fostering service to have a written policy setting out “the purpose, format and content of information to be kept”. So you are not inventing this from scratch. Ask for the policy, and ask what good looks like, rather than guessing for six months.

There are a few specific record-keeping duties elsewhere in the standards too. Standard 6.11 requires that foster carers “keep a written record of all medication, treatment and first aid given to children during their placement”. If a child goes missing, Standard 5.10 requires a written record of what you did, the circumstances of their return and anything they said about why they went.

What to write down

The exact format varies by service, but the content is much the same everywhere. Our own guidance for carers groups it like this.

Health

• Medical, dental and eye appointments, and immunisations
• Any illness, and any pattern in allergic reactions
• Medication given, which your service may also want on a separate medication form
• Accidents and injuries, however small
• Appointments about a child’s mental health and wellbeing

The younger the child, the busier this part gets. A baby has a health review every six months and a vaccination appointment every few weeks, which is one of the reasons fostering a baby comes with more paperwork than most people expect.

School and the good days

• Which nursery or school the child attends, and their attendance
• School meetings, parents’ evenings, and anything significant about their education
• Milestones and achievements. First steps, a certificate, a goal scored, a part in the play
• Anything that went wrong at school, including bullying, fights or a suspension
• Progress of any kind, which is the part carers most often forget to write down

Meetings, family time and where the child has been

• Meetings with social workers
• Family time with parents, brothers, sisters and other relatives, including calls and letters, and how the child seemed before, during and afterwards
• Conversations about the plan for the child’s future, with particular attention to what the child themselves says they want
• Days the child is away, whether that is a holiday, a school trip or a night at a friend’s house
• Dates and times when anyone else was looking after them

Things that went wrong, or worried you

• Incidents, arguments, or anything a child says or does that concerns you. Record it in their words where you can
• Any time a child goes missing
• Anything involving the police
• Anything to do with safer care
• Anything a child discloses to you, or any allegation they make
• Damage or theft

Read that list and it looks enormous. In practice, most days produce three or four lines. School was fine, ate well, rang mum at six and was quiet afterwards, asleep by nine. It is the accumulation that makes it valuable, not the length of any single entry.

Some kinds of fostering ask for more. If you are caring for a parent and their baby together, your recording is far more detailed and it is read far more closely, because it feeds directly into an assessment a court is waiting for. We have explained that in our guide to what parent and child fostering involves.

Fact first, opinion only where you are asked for it

This is the habit that makes everything else easier, and it is the one thing new carers most often get wrong.

“Was rude and aggressive all afternoon” is an opinion, and a judgement about a child, and it is not much use to anyone reading it later. “Came home from school, would not talk, slammed the bedroom door and did not want tea. Came down at eight and said the maths test had gone badly” is a fact, and it tells the reader something they can act on.

Keep third parties out of it as well. Your notes are a record of the child in your care, not of their mother’s new relationship or the neighbour’s opinion of the family. Standard 26.5 asks you to distinguish fact, opinion and information about other people precisely because those three things get read very differently later on.

Where your view genuinely matters, and it often does, say plainly that it is your view. “My sense is that Fridays are hard because of the change of routine” is honest and useful. It just needs to be labelled.

Write it for a reader you have not met

The strongest argument for careful recording has nothing to do with inspectors. Standard 26.6 says it directly:

“Information about the child is recorded clearly and in a way which will be helpful to the child when they access their files now or in the future. Children are actively encouraged to read their files, other than necessarily confidential or third party information, and to correct errors and add personal statements.”

Care-experienced adults do request their files, sometimes decades later, and what they find can be painful. Records written thirty years ago are often brief, cold or quietly blaming. We have written before about how to keep case recording child-focused, and the test is simple. If a line would hurt to read aloud to the person it describes, rewrite it.

The standards also give carers a part in this that goes beyond note taking. Standard 26.7 says the foster carer “understands the important supporting role they play in encouraging the child to reflect on and understand their history”, and that a child should be encouraged to keep photographs and other mementoes of their time with you. The certificate on the fridge, the photo from the beach and the ticket stub from the football all count. Keep copies, because a child who moves on with nothing has to take everyone else’s word for what happened.

How often, and where

Write daily if you can, and weekly at the very least. The minimum frequency is normally agreed at the child’s review, so it is a question worth asking early rather than assuming.

A few practicalities that save trouble later:

• Date every entry
• Use the child’s first name or initials only, so the notes mean less to anyone who should not have them
• Keep a separate record for each child, even brothers and sisters living in the same house
• Keep your language plain and free of jargon, and put a child’s comments in their own words
• Store paper notes somewhere locked, and keep any files on your computer where nobody else in the house can open them

Your service will tell you whether it wants paper, a document on your computer or an entry in an online system such as CHARMS. Records are personal data covered by the UK’s data protection law, which is why the storage question is not a formality.

When you get something wrong

You will, at some point, record something that turns out to be inaccurate. Correct it. Add the correction, keep what you originally wrote, and make it obvious which is which.

The one rule worth memorising is that you never change a record because somebody asked you to. If a social worker, a parent or anybody else wants an entry altered, that is a conversation to have with your supervising social worker, not a change to make quietly. An amended record with the original still visible is trustworthy. An overwritten one is not.

Who reads them, and how long they are kept

Your supervising social worker reads your notes regularly. The Fostering Network is direct about it: “Your daily records should be read by your supervising social worker on a regular basis.” That is not surveillance. It is how a supervising social worker spots that a child needs a hearing test, or that you have had six broken nights in a row and nobody has noticed. If you want to know what that relationship looks like in practice, our page on the support we give our foster carers sets it out.

Beyond that, the notes feed into the child’s own file, and that file is kept for a very long time. Under the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010, a child’s case record must be kept “until the seventy-fifth anniversary of C’s birth”, or for fifteen years if the child dies before turning eighteen. The same regulation requires the record to be kept safely and treated as confidential.

Your own file as a foster carer is kept too. Under the Fostering Services (England) Regulations 2011, a fostering service must keep a case record for every approved carer, and retain it for at least ten years from the date approval ends.

When a child moves on, your records go back to your fostering service if they do not already hold them, and any copies you still have should be destroyed. Shred paper, delete files, and get written confirmation that your service holds a copy before you destroy anything.

The records that protect you

Every foster carer worries about allegations at some point, and the honest answer is that they do happen, they are usually resolved, and the process is horrible while it lasts. We have written elsewhere about what happens when an allegation is made and how we support carers through it.

The relevant point here is narrow. A carer with records written at the time has an account of what happened. A carer without them has a memory, months later, of an ordinary evening. Nobody keeps daily notes hoping to need them this way, but the carers who have been through it never stop again.

Your records travel with you

If you ever move to a different fostering service, your training record, your reviews and your fostering history go with you. Standard 26.9 requires the previous provider to respond to the new provider’s request within one month. It is another quiet argument for keeping your own paperwork in order, and we have set out how transferring to a different fostering agency actually works if that is on your mind.

Worth saying plainly: these are not your tax records. Fostering income is dealt with separately under Qualifying Care Relief, and we have a full guide to whether foster carers pay tax. Keep the two sets of paperwork apart.

You won’t have to do this alone

Recording and report writing is one of the core subjects on the training programme every newly approved South Coast carer completes in their first year, alongside safeguarding, trauma and attachment, safer caring and supporting education. You are not expected to have worked this out in advance.

Your supervising social worker will read your early entries and tell you what is useful and what is missing. Most carers find that the notes stop feeling like homework after about a month, and start feeling like the thing that makes the rest of the role make sense. You notice the pattern in the Sunday nights. You realise the child has not mentioned their dad in three weeks. You can see, on paper, that things are better than they were in February.

A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance. Part of giving that chance is making sure that somebody, years from now, can pick up a file and see that a real person was paying attention.

Frequently asked questions

Do foster carers have to write something every single day?

Most services ask for daily notes, and daily is easier than it sounds because the entries are short. The minimum frequency is usually agreed at the child’s review, so ask what is expected for the particular child you are caring for.

Can the child read what I have written about them?

They may well, either now or as an adult. The National Minimum Standards actively encourage children to read their own files and to correct anything wrong in them. Ask your supervising social worker before handing your notes to a child directly, because there may be information about other people in them.

How long are foster care records kept?

A child’s case record is kept until the seventy-fifth anniversary of their birth, under the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. A foster carer’s own case record is kept for at least ten years after their approval ends.

What if I disagree with something recorded about me?

Say so in writing to your supervising social worker and ask for your comment to be placed on the file. You are entitled to have your view recorded even where the disagreement is not resolved. What you should never do is change an existing entry because someone asked you to.

Do I need to be good at writing to foster?

No. Clear and honest beats polished every time. If writing is hard for you for any reason, tell your fostering service, because there are other ways to record and no reason it should stand between you and fostering.