If you have been anywhere near fostering for more than a month, somebody will have said the word PACE to you. It gets used in training rooms, in supervision and in agency brochures, usually as though everyone already knows what it means. Four letters, four qualities, and a great deal of assumed knowledge. This is what they stand for, and what each one sounds like when you are standing in your own kitchen at half past seven in the morning. It is also what the rules and the guidelines actually say your agency owes you.
Where the word comes from
PACE is not a piece of government policy or a rule your agency has to follow. It comes from the work of the American clinical psychologist Dan Hughes, who built a therapy model called Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, usually shortened to DDP. The DDP Network, which is run by DDPI Worldwide, says Hughes “first developed DDP over 30 years ago”.
PACE is the attitude that model asks the adult to bring. It was designed for therapists first and then handed to parents and carers, which is why it can feel like a clinical idea wearing everyday clothes. Knowing that helps, because it explains why nobody ever quite defines it for you.
Here is something that surprises most people. We searched the Fostering Services: National Minimum Standards, the 2011 document your agency is inspected against, for the language everyone uses. The words “PACE”, “therapeutic parenting”, “playfulness”, “curiosity”, “empathy” and “Dyadic Developmental” do not appear in it. Neither does the word “therapeutic”, anywhere at all.
That is worth sitting with for a moment. The vocabulary the whole sector now speaks in is absent from the standards the sector is measured by. The standards were written in a different decade and they use plainer words for the same ground, and we will come to what they do say.
P is for playfulness
The DDP Network describes playfulness as “creating an atmosphere of lightness and interest when you communicate”, using “a light tone with your voice, like you might use when story telling”. It is about the temperature of the room rather than about being funny.
Fife Council’s educational psychology service, which publishes a plain guide to using PACE with children, gives an example of what that sounds like: “Oh my goodness, look at that worksheet Alex, it looks like a little mouse has nibbled right through it.” The same guide is clear that “Having a playful stance isn’t about being funny all the time or making jokes when a child is sad.”
Timing matters more than the joke does. Fife notes that a playful response “may not be appropriate at the time of risky or distressed behaviours”, and any carer who has tried lightness thirty seconds too early knows exactly what that sentence means.
A is for acceptance
Acceptance is the one most often misunderstood, and it is worth quoting in full. The DDP Network defines it as “actively communicating to the child that you accept the wishes, feelings, thoughts, urges, motives and perceptions that are underneath the outward behaviour”.
Read that again and notice the word underneath. You are accepting what is driving the behaviour, which is a different thing from approving of the behaviour itself. The DDP Network says so directly: “Accepting the child’s intentions does not imply accepting behavior, which may be hurtful or harmful … The parent may be very firm in limiting behavior.”
Fife puts the same point in carer’s language: “Acceptance does not mean you have to accept the behaviour if this is harmful to themselves or to another person.” An example of acceptance in practice: “I’m sorry you think I hate you, that must feel awful, no wonder you’re angry with me.”
So if anyone has told you that therapeutic parenting means no boundaries, no house rules and no consequences, they have it backwards. The whole point of accepting the feeling is that it frees you up to be steady about the behaviour. Our article on what trauma and attachment actually mean in foster care goes into why a child’s reaction is so often much larger than the thing that triggered it.
C is for curiosity
Curiosity is wondering aloud without demanding an answer. The DDP Network describes it as the thing that helps children “become aware of their inner life, reflect upon the reasons for their behaviour”, and adds that you “might make guesses about what a child may be thinking and feeling, saying this aloud, and keeping it connected to the present”.
Fife’s example is a good one to borrow: “You usually really enjoy your Maths work. I wonder what’s different about today?” And it draws the distinction that most of us get wrong at first. That is different, Fife says, “from asking the child, ‘Why did you do that?’ with the expectation of a reply.”
Most children cannot answer why. Adults frequently cannot either. Wondering aloud offers a possible explanation and lets the child take it, correct it or ignore it, which is far easier than being cross-examined.
E is for empathy
Empathy, in the DDP Network’s words, “lets the child feel the adult’s compassion for her. Being empathic means the adult actively showing the child that the child’s inner life is important”. It is active. Feeling sorry for a child quietly on the inside does not reach them.
Fife draws the sharpest line in the whole document here, and it is the line most carers have to unlearn: “Being empathic is not about reassuring the child (which tries to make the problem go away) but about being with them in the moment.”
That runs against every instinct a kind person has. When a child is in pain, you want to fix it, minimise it or explain it away. Empathy asks you to stay in it with them a little longer than is comfortable, which is genuinely harder than offering a solution.
What the standards actually ask of us
The National Minimum Standards never mention PACE, but they are not silent about the ground underneath it. Standard 3 says, word for word:
- 3.2 “Foster carers provide an environment and culture that promotes, models and supports positive behaviour.”
- 3.8 “All foster carers receive training in positive care and control of children, including training in de-escalating problems and disputes.”
- 3.9 “Each foster carer is aware of all the necessary information available to the fostering service about a child’s circumstances, including any significant recent events, to help the foster carer understand and predict the child’s needs and behaviours.”
Standard 3.9 is the one carers most often have to ask for. You cannot be curious about a pattern you have never been told about, and the standard puts the duty to tell you on the service rather than leaving it to chance. If a child arrives and you have been given almost nothing, that is a reasonable thing to raise straight away, and our guide to the first two weeks after a child arrives sets out what else should reach you in that period.
Standard 3.7 covers you rather than the child: “Foster carers receive support on how to manage their responses and feelings arising from caring for children, particularly where children display very challenging behaviour.” The phrase “very challenging behaviour” is the standard’s wording, not ours, and it dates the document. We would say a child who is struggling to cope. The duty underneath it still stands, and it is the right one.
What NICE says you should be offered
This is the part almost nobody in fostering mentions, and it is worth knowing before your next training conversation. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has a guideline on attachment in children and young people who are adopted from care, in care or at high risk of going into care, reference NG26. It recommends no branded parenting programme by name. What it recommends for carers is specific.
Recommendation 1.5.1 says health and social care professionals “should offer a video feedback programme to foster carers, special guardians and adoptive parents”. A video feedback programme means short clips of you and the child together, watched back with a trained worker who helps you notice the moments that went well. NG26 describes such programmes as running for around ten sessions of at least an hour over three to four months. Recommendation 1.5.3 offers an alternative, parental sensitivity and behaviour training, for carers who would rather not be filmed.
NICE’s 2021 guideline on children and young people in care, NG205, goes further on training. It says a schedule of mandatory training for carers should cover “Therapeutic, trauma-informed parenting (covering attachment-informed, highly supportive and responsive relational care)”, alongside “understanding behaviour as a form of communication and as a response to trauma”.
Put those together and you get a slightly awkward picture. The national guideline says the idea should be part of mandatory carer training. The guideline on attachment recommends watching yourself on video with a trained worker, which is a world away from a two-hour slideshow. Very few agencies anywhere in the country offer the video programme. It is a fair question to ask, and you can ask us.
A word about the other PACE
Search for PACE and fostering and you may land somewhere completely different. PACE is also the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and its Code C governs how someone is treated in police custody. Carers of teenagers do sometimes meet it.
Code C, in the version that came into force on 20 December 2023, says at paragraph 1.5 that “Anyone who appears to be under 18, shall, in the absence of clear evidence that they are older, be treated as a juvenile for the purposes of this Code.” Paragraph 1.7 then sets out who can act as the appropriate adult for that young person, including “the parent, guardian or, if the juvenile is in the care of a local authority or voluntary organisation, a person representing that authority or organisation” or “a social worker of a local authority”.
The Code does not name a foster carer in that list. If you are ever in that situation, ring your supervising social worker or the out-of-hours team before anything else. The two PACEs have nothing to do with each other, and it is worth knowing which one someone means.
None of it works when you are running on empty
Every description of therapeutic parenting asks the adult to stay regulated while the child is not. That is a real demand on a real person who also has a job, a family and a washing machine that has started making a noise.
Fife’s guide says it plainly: “Managing situations that require us to be PACEful can be stressful and challenging and we will need to rely on the support of our friends and colleagues at times. Think about your support network, be mindful of your own emotions and be kind to yourselves.”
Standard 3.7 makes that the service’s job, not a personal failing you should be quietly managing on your own. If you find you have nothing left to bring to a difficult bedtime, that is information worth passing on, and what you write down is often where the pattern first becomes visible to everyone else.
What to ask us for
If you take one practical thing from this article, make it a short list of questions. These are all reasonable, and none of them is awkward to ask.
- Does the agency’s training programme cover therapeutic parenting, and who delivers it?
- Is there a video feedback programme, or anything resembling the training NG26 recommends?
- Can a session be arranged on a particular child rather than on the topic in general?
- What did the service already know about this child’s history before they arrived?
- Where can this be talked through with other carers who have been there?
You can see how we structure learning on our training and development page, and what ongoing support looks like on our foster carer support page. If you are earlier than that and still working out whether any of this is for you, the Skills to Foster course is where most of it starts.
You won’t have to do this alone
Nobody arrives able to do this. Playfulness at the right moment, steadiness when you are being tested, curiosity when you would rather have a straight answer: these are skills, and skills are built slowly with somebody alongside you. That somebody is your supervising social worker, and the carers who have already had the evening you are having.
A child isn’t just given a home, they’re given a chance. Part of what makes that chance real is an adult who keeps thinking about what is underneath the behaviour, long after the behaviour has stopped being easy to live with. We will help you learn how, and we will keep helping.
Curious about fostering? A 15 to 20 minute conversation is all it takes to find out more.
Or read more about whether you could foster.
Frequently asked questions
What does PACE stand for?
Playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy. It is the attitude an adult is asked to bring to a child who has had a hard start, and it comes from Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, a therapy model developed by the psychologist Dan Hughes.
Does therapeutic parenting mean no rules?
No. The DDP Network, which explains the approach, says that accepting what a child feels “does not imply accepting behavior, which may be hurtful or harmful”, and that a parent “may be very firm in limiting behavior”. Accepting the feeling underneath is what makes it possible to be calm and consistent about the behaviour on top.
Is PACE required by law or by the fostering standards?
No. The Fostering Services National Minimum Standards do not mention PACE, therapeutic parenting or Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy at all. Standard 3.8 does require that all foster carers receive training in positive care and control of children, including de-escalating problems and disputes, and NICE guideline NG205 says mandatory carer training should cover therapeutic, trauma-informed parenting.
Why do people say empathy is different from reassurance?
Because reassurance tries to make the feeling go away, and empathy stays with it. Fife Council’s educational psychology service puts it as being with a child in the moment rather than trying to make the problem disappear, which is usually the harder of the two.
Do I need a qualification to parent this way?
No qualification is needed to foster, and none is needed to use this approach at home. Training helps, and it is worth asking your agency what it offers and who delivers it. South Coast Fostering covers attachment and trauma-informed care in ongoing learning, and we will talk through what would be useful for the children you care for.