What happens in the first two weeks after a child arrives?

Almost everything written for new foster carers stops at the front door. The shopping list, the bedroom, the first night. What hardly anyone describes is the fortnight that follows, which is where the actual work sits, and where most new carers quietly wonder whether they are getting it wrong. This guide starts on day two and runs to the end of the second week.

A note on words: the National Minimum Standards and the statutory guidance call a child’s home a placement and call a child in care a looked-after child. Neither of those is how children describe their own lives, so where we quote a document we have kept its words, and everywhere else we have used plainer ones.

There is a clock running through your first fortnight

Nobody hands you a timetable when a child arrives, but one is already running. Four separate deadlines fall inside your first twenty working days, set by regulations and by government guidance rather than by your agency. Knowing they exist changes what you ask for and when you ask for it.

• Five working days. The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 require that the placement plan “must be prepared within five working days of the start of the placement”. Fosterline, the government-funded advice service for foster carers, describes a planning meeting happening “within 5 working days of the child or young person moving in”.
• Ten working days. Where a child has come to you in an emergency, the Department for Education’s guidance on the education of children in care says “the PEP is initiated within 10 working days”. The PEP is the personal education plan, and it is the document that turns concern about school into someone’s job.
• Twenty school days. The same guidance says that after an emergency move, “the authority that looks after the child should secure a suitable new education placement within 20 school days”.
• Twenty working days. The first review of the child’s care plan, chaired by an independent reviewing officer. The health guidance ties the medical to it: the initial health assessment “should result in a health plan, which is available in time for the first statutory review by the Independent Reviewing Officer (IRO) of the child’s care plan”.

None of those deadlines is yours to meet. Every one of them belongs to the local authority. But you are the person who will notice when one starts to slide, because you are the person living with what happens if it does. A child sitting at your kitchen table on a Tuesday morning in week three because no school place has been sorted is your Tuesday morning as well as theirs.

Day two sets the tone, not day one

The first night is survival for everyone in the house. Day two is where a household actually starts, and the temptation is to fill it. A trip out, or a parade of relatives who all want to meet the new arrival.

Resist all of it. Fosterline’s advice to newly approved carers is to “Limit your wider family and friend visits to the home initially to give the child time to settle in”, and there is a good reason behind it. A child who has just moved has no idea yet which adults in this house are permanent and which are passing through. Adding six more faces in week one makes that harder to work out, not easier.

What helps more is dull repetition. Breakfast at roughly the same time each morning. Tea at six, because tea is always at six. Predictability is what a new home offers that the last few weeks of a child’s life probably did not, and it is worth more in the first fortnight than any outing.

What the standards actually ask of you

Standard 11 of the National Minimum Standards for fostering services is about welcoming a child into a home. Its outcome statement is worth reading slowly, because it sets a higher bar than most people expect.

Children are welcomed into the foster home and leave the foster home in a planned and sensitive manner which makes them feel loved and valued. Children feel part of the family. They are not treated differently to the foster carer’s own children living in the household. The child’s needs are met and they benefit from a stable placement.

That is a high bar. Loved and valued sits a long way past safe and fed. The standard underneath it, 11.4, is the one that gets missed in practice: “Children are given free access to the household facilities as would be consistent with reasonable arrangements in a family home. Foster carers explain everyday household rules and expectations to children.”

Most new carers do the second half of that sentence and forget the first. A child who has to ask permission for a glass of squash, or who does not know whether they are allowed to open the fridge, is being told something about where they stand in the house. Show them the cupboard the biscuits live in on day two and mean it.

Two smaller things in the same standard are easy to honour and matter a great deal. Standard 11.3 says “Children can bring their favourite possessions into the foster carer’s home”, and the point extends past arrival: nothing a child brought with them gets thrown out, washed away or quietly replaced in the first fortnight, however tatty it looks to you. Standard 16.3 says the service “ensures the child receives the Children’s Guide at the point of placement”. Ask whether it arrived. Then read it yourself, because it tells the child what they are entitled to and you should know what you are being measured against.

House rules land better when they describe what you do

Every household has rules and a child needs to hear them early. How you phrase them in week one tends to stick.

Fosterline suggests framing a rule as the thing everyone does rather than the thing nobody may do. Their own example is worth copying almost word for word: say “we respect privacy and knock on the bedroom door and wait to get permission to enter someone else’s bedroom” rather than “do not go into anyone else’s bedroom without knocking”. The second version tells a child there is a list of ways to be in trouble here. The first tells them how this family behaves, and quietly includes them in it.

Keep the list short in the first fortnight. Safety first, then the two or three things that genuinely matter in your house. Everything else can wait until you know each other.

What sleep and mealtimes will tell you

Appetite and sleep are usually the first things to move and the last things to settle. A child who eats almost nothing for three days, or who eats enormously and hides food in their room, is not being difficult. Both are ordinary responses to not knowing whether the next meal is guaranteed.

Ask what they actually eat before you cook anything ambitious, and take the answer at face value even if it is beige. Familiar food does a job in week one that home cooking cannot. Keep something they like permanently in the cupboard and tell them it is there.

Sleep is harder and slower. Expect broken nights, a light left on, a door that has to stay open, and a child who is exhausted by four in the afternoon. None of that needs fixing in a fortnight. It needs the same bedtime, a nightlight if they want one, and an adult who does not make a problem of it.

School in the first fortnight

If a child can stay at their existing school, that is almost always the right answer, even if getting there is awkward for a few weeks. School is often the only part of their life that has not changed.

Where a new school is needed, the twenty school day deadline above is the one to hold people to. Alongside it sits the personal education plan, and the guidance makes it the joint responsibility of the council and the school rather than something you are expected to produce. Your job is to know it exists, to ask when the meeting is, and to say the things about the child that only someone living with them can say. Every school also has a designated teacher for children in care, and every council has a virtual school head. Both are people you can ask for by name.

Health in the first fortnight

The health guidance is clear that children in care should “always be registered with GPs and have access to dentists near to where they are living”, and registering is usually one of the first practical jobs of week one. An optician is worth adding while you are at it.

The initial health assessment follows, timed so the health plan is ready for that first review. Attendance is explicitly your responsibility once a child is living with you. The guidance says local authorities must make sure “that foster carers and residential care staff know it is their responsibility to make sure a child attends their health assessment and all other medical, dental and optical appointments, and facilitate any required treatment regimes”. After that first assessment, the health plan is reviewed “at least once every six months before a child’s fifth birthday and at least once every 12 months after the child’s fifth birthday”.

One warning worth carrying into the first fortnight: you may not be able to consent to treatment yourself. What you can and cannot agree to should be written down, which brings us to the meeting.

The meeting in the first five working days

The planning meeting is the single most useful hour of your first fortnight, and new carers routinely leave it having been told a great deal and having asked very little. Go in with a written list. You want decisions out of it, written down, about who is allowed to agree to what.

• Can you consent to routine medical and dental treatment, or does every appointment need a signature from elsewhere?
• Can the child stay overnight at a friend’s house, and who decides?
• Who signs school trip forms and photograph permissions?
• What are the arrangements for a phone, and for going online?
• Who is allowed to collect the child from school, and who is not?
• What has the child been told about why they are here and how long for?

That last question matters more than the rest. A child who has been told one story by a social worker and a different one by you will trust neither of you, and the first fortnight is when that gets decided. The standards expect you to have full information about the child before they arrive, but in a short notice arrival you often do not, so this meeting is where the gaps get filled.

Write down more than feels necessary

Your recording in the first fortnight is worth more than your recording at any other point, because it is the only account anyone will ever have of how a child arrived and what changed. Write what you saw, not what you concluded. “Ate two slices of toast, left the rest, asked twice whether his mum knew where he was” is useful in six months. “Seemed unsettled” is not.

We have written a fuller guide to what foster carers have to write down, and the first two weeks are the point at which the habit is easiest to build.

Nobody can tell you how long settling in takes

You will hear the phrase “honeymoon period” a lot in fostering. It describes a calm, compliant first few weeks followed by something much harder once a child starts to believe they are not about to be moved again.

It is worth saying plainly that this is a pattern people report, not a rule. The National Minimum Standards do not mention it. The statutory guidance does not mention it. No official source sets a timetable for when a child’s behaviour might change, and the experienced carers we work with will tell you why: some children are furious on day three, some are still impeccably polite at month four, and a few are neither. Treat any confident claim about week six with suspicion.

What follows from that is more useful than the phrase itself. A calm fortnight is not proof that it has worked, so do not let it stop you asking for support. A hard fortnight is not proof that it has failed, so do not let it convince you that you are the wrong person for this. Two weeks is far too short a period to be a verdict on anything.

Your own household has a first fortnight too

If you have children of your own at home, they are adjusting to a stranger in the house on exactly the same timetable, with less choice about it than you had. The National Minimum Standards require fostering services to support the children of foster carers, and that support is not something you have to earn by struggling first.

Protect one thing that belongs only to them in the first fortnight. A bedtime story that does not get interrupted, or a Saturday morning that stays theirs. Children accept sharing their parents far better when something visibly remains their own.

The same goes for you. Carers often describe the first fortnight as the tiredest they have been in years, partly because of broken sleep and partly because you are being watched all day by someone trying to work out if you are safe. Cancel what you can cancel.

What your supervising social worker should be doing

You should not be getting through the first fortnight on your own. Fosterline’s advice is blunt about this: carers “should share any concerns with their supervising social worker at the earliest opportunity, and discuss any additional support that may be available”. Early means early. A question asked in week one is a question; the same question in week nine is a problem with a history.

At South Coast you have a named supervising social worker rather than whoever is free, and out of hours advice is available around the clock, because the things that go wrong with a new arrival rarely wait for office hours. You can read more about the support you get as a foster carer, and about the different types of foster care if you are still working out which would suit your household.

Money in the first two weeks

Children often arrive with very little, and sometimes with nothing that fits. The weekly payment you receive combines an allowance towards the everyday cost of looking after a child with a professional fee for your role, and kitting a child out in the first fortnight is exactly what the allowance is there for. Ask your supervising social worker what else is available for a child arriving with nothing, because it varies by local authority and nobody volunteers it.

Pocket money is worth sorting in week one rather than week five. A child with a little money of their own has a small piece of ordinary life back, and we have written separately about how to teach a young person about money. The detail of what you are paid is set out on our fostering payments and allowances page.

Seeing family usually starts quickly

For many children, seeing their family begins within days of moving in rather than weeks, and the arrangements are set by the local authority rather than by you. Two things are worth knowing before the first one.

The first is that a child can come home from family time silent or furious, and that is not evidence the visit went badly. Seeing a parent reopens everything a child has been holding still all week. The second is that your written account of how they were before and afterwards genuinely shapes what happens next, which is another reason to record properly from day one. Our older piece on maintaining family ties covers why those relationships matter even when they are difficult.

You won’t have to do this alone

The honest summary of a first fortnight is that very little of it feels like success while it is happening. You will get bedtimes wrong, cook the wrong dinner, say the wrong thing about a child’s mum and lie awake wondering whether a quiet child is a settled child or a frightened one. That is the job in week two, and it is not a sign you chose badly.

What makes the difference is having someone experienced to ring when you get it wrong, which you will. A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance, and the people who give them that chance are ordinary households who were nervous in their first fortnight too.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take a child to settle in?

There is no official answer, and any source that gives you a confident number is guessing. Neither the National Minimum Standards nor the statutory guidance sets a timescale for settling in. Some children look settled within days and unravel later; others are visibly distressed at first and steady quickly. A fortnight is too early to judge either way.

Should I take time off work when a child first arrives?

Most carers who can take the first week off are glad they did, because the practical tasks alone fill it: registering with a GP and dentist, sorting school, attending the planning meeting and simply being in the house. Many foster carers work as well as foster. Talk to your supervising social worker about what your household can realistically manage before a child arrives rather than afterwards.

What happens if the first two weeks go badly?

Ring your supervising social worker and say so early. Difficult first weeks are common and a great deal of support can be arranged quickly when someone knows it is needed. Very few situations improve by being absorbed silently for a month first.

Can I take a child to the doctor myself?

You are responsible for making sure a child attends their health appointments, and government guidance states that plainly. Whether you can consent to treatment is a separate question, and the answer should be written into the plan agreed at the meeting in your first five working days. If it is not written down, ask for it to be.

Will a child see their family in the first two weeks?

Often yes. Arrangements for seeing parents, brothers and sisters are decided by the local authority as part of the child’s care plan, and for many children the first visit happens within days rather than weeks. You should be told the arrangements at the planning meeting.