How do you get your home ready for fostering?

Almost everyone who enquires about fostering asks some version of the same question: is my house good enough? The honest answer is that the standard is lower than people fear and more specific than they expect. Nobody is judging your kitchen units. Somebody will ask where you keep the bleach, whether your stairs have a handrail that is properly fixed to the wall, and what happens if a child wakes at two in the morning and wanders downstairs. This is a walk through your home, room by room, with the things a fostering service actually looks at.

What the rules actually ask of your home

The requirement sits in the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards, the framework Ofsted inspects against. Standard 10 covers the physical environment, and it is short. It asks that the home “can comfortably accommodate all who live there” and that it is “warm, adequately furnished and decorated, is maintained to a good standard of cleanliness and hygiene and is in good order throughout”. Outdoor space that belongs to the property must be “safe, secure and well maintained”.

The line that matters most is in Standard 10.3, and it is the one nobody quotes. Foster carers must be “trained in health and safety issues” and have written guidance on their responsibilities, and then this: “Avoidable hazards are removed as is consistent with a family home.” Read that last clause twice. The standard is not a laboratory. It is a family home with the avoidable dangers taken out of it, which is a very different thing and a much kinder one.

Standard 10.4 adds the bit people forget, because it reaches past the front door. Carers have to understand the service’s policy on “safety for children in the foster home and in vehicles used to transport foster children”. Your car is part of the assessment.

The health and safety check, and when it happens

You will have a health and safety check of your home during your assessment, usually early on, alongside the references and background checks. A social worker walks round with a checklist and goes through it with you rather than at you. Most of what comes out of it is small: a missing smoke alarm battery, a stair gate, a cupboard that needs a catch on it. Standard 10.3 requires the service to give you written guidance on your health and safety responsibilities, so you should not be left guessing at what is expected.

Two things about the check surprise people. The first is that it does not stop at approval. Standard 10.5 requires that “the foster home is inspected annually, without appointment, by the fostering service to make sure that it continues to meet the needs of foster children”, and Standard 21.8 separately requires at least one unannounced visit to every carer each year. So there will be a knock at the door you were not expecting, once a year, for as long as you foster. In practice it is a cup of tea and a look round, and carers tell us it stops mattering after the first one.

The second is that moving house resets it. Our own guidance is blunt about this: if you move home, a new health and safety inspection has to be carried out. Tell us early if you are thinking of moving, because it is far easier to plan around than to discover halfway through.

Health and safety is also one of the short courses you do before approval, sitting alongside first aid and safeguarding. Standard 6.7 requires training on health, hygiene and first aid, and you can see how the whole programme fits together on our training and development page.

Start at the child’s eye level

The single most useful instruction in our health and safety guidance takes ten minutes to follow. Walk round your house and get down to the height of a small child, then look again. Things appear that you have stopped seeing: a trailing kettle lead, the gap under the bannister, a handle at exactly the right height to pull open. Our guidance also gives a sensible rule for what to do next. If the fix is quick, do it there and then. If it needs more work, put a temporary fix in place today and book the proper one.

For context on why this is worth the effort, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents reports that falls “account for 44 per cent of all children’s accidents” in the home, that nought to four year olds have the most accidents at home, and that more than 28,000 children a year are treated for poisoning or suspected poisoning. These are not rare events in unusual houses. They happen in ordinary ones.

Stairs and windows

Every staircase needs a handrail that is securely fastened, not just present. RoSPA says 58,000 children a year have accidents on the stairs, and recommends a safety gate made to BS EN 1930 at the top and the bottom for the under-fives. Windows want child-resistant restrictors, with the important caveat that you must still be able to get out in an emergency, so keep the key where an adult can find it in the dark. If you have a balcony, the walls or railings must be impossible for a child to climb or get through.

Fire, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide

A working smoke alarm on every floor, fitted to a flat ceiling, tested weekly. If you would rather not have one in the kitchen because of the burnt toast, put it immediately outside the kitchen door instead. Check that any fire extinguisher you own is in date, use a spark guard on an open fire, and keep a fire blanket in the kitchen. Never put water on an electrical fire or on oil that has caught in a pan. Turn the heat off, smother it, and if it is at all serious get everyone out, shut the door and call 999.

If you rent, there is a legal floor underneath all of that. Since 1 October 2022 your landlord must make sure “at least one smoke alarm is equipped on each storey” of the property where there is a room used as living accommodation, and must fit a carbon monoxide alarm in “any room used as living accommodation which contains a fixed combustion appliance (excluding gas cookers)”. Those regulations do not apply to owner-occupiers, which is exactly why we ask everybody rather than only tenants.

Electrics and the charging pile

Look at your sockets properly. Replace anything damaged or scorched, get a qualified electrician to any switch that is loose or discoloured, and keep one multiplug per socket with nothing daisy-chained. Our guidance asks carers not to leave things plugged in and charging overnight, and to unplug appliances that get hot as soon as they are finished with. It also advises against plug socket inserts, which surprises most people. The reason usually given is that a UK socket is already shuttered behind the holes, and an insert can damage that shutter.

The kitchen

More than 67,000 children a year have an accident in the kitchen according to RoSPA, and 43,000 of those are under five. Turn pan handles inwards. Keep the kettle and the toaster back from the edge of the worktop. Never leave cooking unattended, and think about whether a young child should be in the room at all while the hob is on. Food hygiene is part of this too, and the basics are enough: raw and cooked food kept apart, surfaces cleaned before and after, and anything past its use-by date in the bin rather than sniffed hopefully.

The bathroom and hot water

Scalds from bath water send around 500 children a year to hospital and another 2,000 to A&E, nearly all of them under five. RoSPA’s advice is to run the domestic hot water system at 46°C or fit a thermostatic mixing valve to the taps. Our own health and safety guidance goes further and asks carers to keep tap water to a maximum of 43°C. Either way, the principle is the same: make it impossible to run a bath that could hurt somebody, rather than relying on remembering. Never leave a baby or young child in the bath even for a moment, and there should be no electrical sockets in a bathroom.

Anything a child could swallow

Standard 6.9 of the National Minimum Standards is one line and it is not negotiable: “Medicines kept in the foster home are stored safely and are accessible only by those for whom they are intended.” In practice that means a locked cupboard or box, including for your own prescriptions and including for paracetamol. The same goes for cleaning products, weedkiller, sharp knives and scissors, razors, matches, lighters, alcohol, and cosmetics and shampoos, which poison more toddlers than people imagine. Plastic bags count as well.

Button batteries deserve their own paragraph, because most households have dozens and almost nobody thinks about them. The Child Accident Prevention Trust’s advice is to “store button batteries in a safe place, up high and out of your child’s reach” and to dispose of used ones straight away, because “they are still unsafe”. They sit in remote controls, light-up toys, car key fobs, bathroom scales and greetings cards. If you think a child has swallowed one, go straight to A&E or call an ambulance. CAPT’s own case study describes a two year old who swallowed a battery from a remote control and died within hours. Loose magnets carry a similar risk.

Bedrooms and sleep

Standard 10.6 expects each child over three to have their own bedroom, and sets out what has to be agreed and recorded if two children share. We have written about what that means in practice, including the rule for babies, in our piece on whether you need a spare bedroom to foster. For sleep safety, skip pillows and heavy duvets for babies and use a sheet or a lightweight blanket or an infant sleeping bag, and keep the cot clear of anything that could fall on a baby’s face or that they could get tangled in. There is more detail in our article on what it is like to foster a baby. Washing lines and hanging cords need tying up and out of the way. Looped blind cords have killed at least 33 young children in the UK since 2001, which is the sort of number that changes behaviour.

The garden

Gates and doors that lead off the property should be locked or barred so a child cannot let themselves out. A pond or a pool needs covering or fencing, and if neither is workable the area gets locked and younger children only go out there with you. Cover the sandpit when it is not in use. Keep power tools away and keep children at a distance while you are using them. If you have anything with toxic berries growing, take it out. Barbecues stay supervised after they are used as well as while they are lit, because a cooling grill is still hot enough to burn a hand.

Pets, and a change in the law you may not have seen

Having a dog or a cat does not stop you fostering. The Department for Education listed pets as one of the eight myths it wanted to knock down in its February 2026 fostering paper, and plenty of our carers have animals. What we ask is practical: never leave a child alone with an animal, keep pet food and litter trays out of reach, ask about allergies, and teach a child arriving in your home how to approach your pet and what it dislikes. Our article on pets and fostering children goes into the benefits as well as the risks.

One thing has genuinely changed, and it is recent enough that most people have not caught up with it. If you own a banned breed dog under an exemption, including an XL Bully, the government announced on 9 June 2026 that from 1 November 2026 owners “must not leave a child under the age of 12 in close proximity to a banned breed dog in a domestic setting or other private settings place without adult supervision”. It becomes a condition of the Certificate of Exemption, and breaching it can mean the dog is seized and the owner prosecuted under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. The same guidance confirms that third party public liability insurance stopped being required for exempted dogs on 1 July 2026. If this applies to you, tell us at the first conversation rather than at the safety check.

The car

Because of Standard 10.4, your vehicle comes into it. Check with your insurer that you are covered to carry a child you are fostering, keep the policy and the MOT current, and use the child locks. On seats, the law is simple to state: a child must normally use a child car seat until they are 12 years old or 135 centimetres tall, whichever comes first, and a height-based seat “must be rear facing until your child is over 15 months old”. If you are ever fitting a rear-facing baby seat in a front seat, the airbag has to be deactivated first. Ask us which seat a particular child needs rather than guessing, because the answer depends on their height and not their age.

Devices and the router

This is the part of the home check that barely existed fifteen years ago and now takes the longest. Work out what parental controls your broadband and your devices offer before a child arrives, because doing it afterwards feels like a punishment rather than a house rule. Our article on online safety covers the conversation as well as the settings.

What the check is not

It is not an inspection of your taste or your housekeeping, and it has nothing to do with how much you earn. There is no minimum room size anywhere in the National Minimum Standards, and no requirement to have a garden. Owning rather than renting makes no difference either, and nobody is counting your bedrooms against a formula. The word “consistent with a family home” in Standard 10.3 is there deliberately, because a house so sanitised that a child cannot relax in it has failed a different test.

It is also not a pass or fail moment. Almost every first safety check produces a short list of jobs, and almost every one of them gets done in a fortnight. If something needs real money or real time, say so, and we will work out the order to do it in.

The risk assessment changes with the child

A general home safety check is only half of it. Standard 4.5 requires the service to take “a proportionate approach to any risk assessment”, and proportionate means specific. The arrangements for a nine month old who is just pulling herself up are not the arrangements for a fifteen year old who has been missing from home before. You will build a safer caring plan for your household, then adjust it for each child who comes to live with you, with your supervising social worker.

That is also the honest answer to the question of when to buy things. Some of it you simply cannot know in advance.

What to get now, and what to leave

Worth doing before you are approved, because they are cheap and useful whoever arrives:

• Smoke alarms on every floor, with batteries you have actually tested.
• A lockable cupboard or a sturdy lockable box for medicines and cleaning products.
• Window restrictors, and a handrail properly fixed if yours is loose.
• A fire blanket for the kitchen.
• A drawer of basics: a new toothbrush, toiletries, pyjamas in a couple of sizes, a nightlight and a phone charger.

Worth leaving until you know who is coming:

• Bedding, curtains and decoration for the bedroom, beyond making it clean and warm. A child who chooses their own duvet cover in the first week has been given something.
• Stair gates and a cot, unless you are specifically hoping to care for babies and toddlers.
• A car seat, which has to suit a particular child’s height.
• Clothes. Ask us what is provided and when, and have a look at our fostering payments and allowances page.

If something does go wrong, write it down

Accidents happen in careful houses. What matters is that you record them at the time, in plain factual language, and tell your supervising social worker. The National Minimum Standards require a written record of first aid and of any medication given, and the habit of recording properly is one of the things that protects you as well as the child. Our article on what foster carers have to write down sets out how it works.

You won’t have to do this alone

Nobody expects you to read a framework document and work out what it means for your stairs. That is what the assessment is for, and why the safety check happens with a social worker sitting next to you rather than arriving as a letter. You can see the shape of the whole process in our piece on the fostering assessment, and what happens afterwards on our support page.

Foster carers do not wear capes. They have ordinary houses on ordinary streets across Hampshire, Dorset, Sussex, Kent, Surrey and the Isle of Wight, with the bleach in a locked cupboard and a gate at the top of the stairs. A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance, and the home part of that is more achievable than it looks from the outside.

Frequently asked questions

Will my home be inspected before I am approved?

Yes. A health and safety check of your home is part of the assessment, normally early on. A social worker goes through a checklist with you and leaves you a copy, and anything that needs fixing is discussed rather than held against you.

Is there a minimum room size or house size to foster?

No. There is no minimum room size or square footage anywhere in the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards. Standard 10.1 asks only that the home can comfortably accommodate everyone who lives there. Standard 10.6 sets the expectation that a child over three has their own bedroom.

Can I foster if I rent my home?

Yes. Renting is not a barrier, and the Department for Education named it as one of the myths it wanted to dispel in February 2026. You will usually be asked to confirm that your landlord knows you are fostering, and if you rent, your landlord already has legal duties on smoke and carbon monoxide alarms that an owner-occupier does not.

Will the safety check be repeated after I am approved?

Yes, once a year, and without an appointment. Standard 10.5 requires the foster home to be inspected annually without appointment, and Standard 21.8 requires at least one unannounced visit a year as part of your supervision. Moving house triggers a new inspection.

Do I need to put my dog in kennels to foster?

Almost certainly not. Pets are welcome in fostering households and are often good for children. You will be asked about your animals, and we will agree sensible rules with you. If you own a banned breed dog under a Certificate of Exemption, be aware that from 1 November 2026 a child under 12 must not be left in close proximity to it in a private place without adult supervision, so tell us early.

How much of this should I do before I enquire?

None of it. Enquire first, ask whatever you want on the call, and deal with the house once you know you want to go ahead. The only thing worth doing today is the ten minute walk round at a child’s eye level, because it tells you more about your own home than any checklist will.