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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Two words get used constantly in fostering and explained hardly at all. Here is what attachment and trauma actually mean, what the National Minimum Standards and NICE really say about them, the questionnaire you will be asked to fill in every year, and the training your agency should be offering you.
Pocket money, bank accounts, the Junior ISA for children in care and the first wage packet. A practical guide for foster carers on building a young person’s financial capability, from primary school to eighteen.
Every applicant does preparation training before approval, and for most people that means the Skills to Foster course. Here is what the three days and six sessions actually cover, who else is in the room, whether it counts as a test, what the National Minimum Standards say you are entitled to be told, and where it all sits alongside your assessment.
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.
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.
