Ofsted inspected South Coast Fostering from 12 to 16 January 2026 and published the report on 21 February. We were rated Outstanding in all three judgements.
| The overall experiences and progress of children and young people | Outstanding |
| How well children and young people are helped and protected | Outstanding |
| The effectiveness of leaders and managers | Outstanding |
Inspectors wrote that the agency provides highly effective services that consistently exceed the standards of good.
What the grades mean
Ofsted inspects every independent fostering agency in England and awards one of four grades: Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement to be good, or Inadequate. Good means an agency meets the standards it is required to meet. Outstanding means it goes beyond them, and inspectors have to see that in the daily experience of the children living with our carers, not in our paperwork.
Why this matters if you are thinking about fostering
Choosing an agency is really a decision about who will be at the end of the phone at eleven at night when something has gone wrong. An Ofsted grade is the one piece of evidence about that which nobody at the agency wrote. Inspectors talk to children, to foster carers, to the local authority social workers we work alongside, and to our own staff. Then they publish what they found, whether we like it or not.
So if you are weighing up agencies, read our report. Then read the reports of everyone else you are considering. They are all free and they are all public.
Read the report
The full inspection report is published on the Ofsted website. Our URN is 2580767, and our provider page lists our full inspection history.
Read our January 2026 Ofsted report (PDF)
See our Ofsted provider page
Talk to us about fostering
If you are thinking about fostering in Hampshire, Dorset, Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Bristol or the Isle of Wight, we would be glad to talk it through with you. There is no pressure and no commitment.
Call us on 023 8235 2020, any time of day, or register your interest and we will call you back.