News & guides
Useful reading for the curious, the nearly-ready and everyone in between. Start with the question that brought you here.
A good place to start
Five questions worth asking before you choose a fostering agency.
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6 articles
Getting started
Yes. Care, consistency and commitment are what matter. Here are a few things to think about.
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Getting started
Your experience can be a strength. The conversation starts with your life now, and what you could offer.
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Getting started
You don’t need a partner to foster. You do need the time, stability and support to care for a child.
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Home & family
What to know about the spare room, and why it is part of the fostering conversation.
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Choosing your agency
A useful first conversation should leave you clearer about the people, payments and support around you.
Read the guideSCF news · January 2026 inspection
Read the independent findings from South Coast Fostering’s Ofsted inspection.
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Short break fostering, sometimes called respite, means the same child staying with you for a night or a weekend at a time, planned well ahead. Here is the 17-day and 75-day rule that defines it in law, what changes about the paperwork, how you are approved and trained, how the pay and tax work for a short stay, and what the role asks of you that full-time fostering does not.
Foster carers keep a short, dated note of how each child’s day went, and those notes end up in supervision, in court, and sometimes in the hands of the child themselves years later. Here is what to write down, what the National Minimum Standards actually require, why fact matters more than opinion, and how long the records are kept.
Foster carers have the right to move between fostering services, but the process has rules that catch people out. Here is what the national transfer protocol says, why you must never resign before speaking to a new agency, what happens if a child is living with you, and how long a transfer really takes.
Fostering a baby means the feeds and the broken nights, and also a health review every six months, an immunisation schedule, family time several days a week and a court timetable you do not control. Here is what caring for a baby in foster care really involves, why a spare bedroom is often not the barrier people think, and what happens when the baby moves on.
Men can and do foster, whether single or with a partner. Here is what a male foster carer actually does day to day, how safer care protects you, how fostering fits around work, and what the assessment will ask of you.
There is no upper age limit for foster carers in England. Here is what the rules really say about fostering after 55, what the medical looks at, how fostering pay sits alongside a pension, and the questions an assessing social worker will ask.
In parent and child fostering, a mother or father moves in alongside their baby and stays for around twelve weeks while the local authority assesses whether they can care for their child on their own. Here is what the role really involves, why the family court is usually behind it, what gets written into the agreement before anyone arrives, and what South Coast pays for it.
Fostering and adoption start in the same place and then go in very different directions. One legal difference explains almost all of the others: adopters become a child’s legal parents, foster carers do not hold parental responsibility. Here is how the two compare on permanence, money, approval and the places where they overlap.
Emergency, short-term, long-term, parent and child, baby, short breaks, enhanced fostering and Staying Put all ask something different of a carer. Here is what each one actually involves day to day, what South Coast pays for it, and a few honest questions to help you work out which one would fit your life.
A conversation, at your pace
You don’t need to be ready to apply. A friendly conversation can help you work out your next step.
Usually 15–20 minutes. No pressure to apply.
