An exciting £12.4m innovation fund seeks to revolutionize foster care by making it more flexible, inclusive, and better suited to contemporary lifestyles.
Chanice, a foster child, experienced a shift in her life during her weekends. This wasn’t due to any monumental event, rather through ordinary time spent with a person who consistently returned. Activities such as theatre trips, exploring new places, learning new things, and slowly forming a lasting relationship made a difference in her life.
“Having a Weekender is different from having a parent,” Chanice explained. “For me, it was about having someone who kept showing up, who took me to new places, taught me things, introduced me to theatre, and believed I could do more. When you are in foster care, people can come and go, so having a consistent adult who is still there years later really matters. [Carer] Sara became part of my life, not just for a weekend, but for the long term.”
This concept, that a child in foster care might require not only a foster home, but a broader circle of adults who can provide consistent support over time, is a fundamental principle of a novel initiative to revamp fostering in England.
The government has initiated a £12.4m Fostering Innovation Fund, with a vision to modernise foster care and make it more accessible to a diverse range of people. As part of a broader government commitment to create 10,000 additional foster care places during this parliament, the fund aims to counteract the recent decline in approved fostering households.
As of March 2025, there were 42,190 fostering households in England, a number that has steadily decreased since 2021, according to Ofsted. The number of traditional local authority fostering households has particularly reduced in recent years. This decline is not due to diminished care, but rather due to the system making it challenging for the right people to step forward, and for some existing carers to continue.
The new fund’s goal is not merely to ask more people to do an already challenging job. It’s about changing who feels that fostering is a possibility for them in the first place.
For years, fostering was conceived through a narrow view of family life, built around a couple, a spare room and at least one adult providing care in a traditional way. This model will continue to be right for many children and carers, however it does not reflect the wide range of households, working patterns and support networks that exist today.
The novel approach aims to test ways of making fostering more flexible, while not compromising the level of care or safety measures for children. For instance, it could involve supporting carers to better utilise their existing space, creating robust local clusters of support around foster families, or developing models where people provide regular weekend care or respite, thus forming long-term relationships with children while supporting full-time carers.
One such example being developed is Weekenders, led by NOW Foster, which gives people a pathway to build a relationship with a child when full-time fostering is not possible. Sara Fernandez, NOW Foster’s CEO, knows the power of this model personally. She first met Chanice when she was 26 and did not feel able to foster full-time.
“We started with weekends and sleepovers, doing very ordinary things: swimming, bike rides, knitting, crochet, theatre trips, cooking and chatting,” recalls Fernandez. “Over time, those ordinary weekends developed into an enduring relationship, still going strong over 12 years later. That is what is so powerful about the Weekenders model. It gives people a flexible, realistic route into being there for a child, similar to an auntie, uncle or godparent, while providing children another trusted adult who is committed to them as they grow up. It helped me learn more about fostering and I went on to do other fostering roles over the years too,” she says.
These more flexible routes into fostering aren’t aiming to replace full-time foster care, but instead, aim to strengthen it by offering children more trusted adults and giving potential carers the confidence, training and experience to consider taking on more in the future.
Other models are addressing different barriers. For example, Room Makers supports carers to adapt their homes so they can welcome a child or keep siblings together. In Greater Manchester, one foster carer who was limited by space was awarded a £7,800 grant through the scheme to reconfigure her home and will soon be able to care for siblings.
The Mockingbird model, on the other hand, builds constellations of foster families around a central “hub home”, so carers and children are not left to cope alone. It is a simple but powerful insight: foster families, like any families, are more likely to thrive when they have practical help, friendship and people nearby who understand what they are going through.
Amy Burns, who is care experienced, illustrates what the lack of that support can feel like.
“There were two years between Mum dying and being fostered,” she says. “There was breakdown. There was chaos. There was danger. And then there was a new home, a new start, and a new village. My foster family saved my life, as much as my social workers, as much as anyone who came before. You don’t have to be a full-time foster carer to make a difference. A village for someone who is care experienced might look like teachers, neighbours, people from past foster placements. But it has to exist.”
Fostering is not an easy task, and presenting it as a simple act of kindness would be misleading. Children in care may have experienced grief, trauma, neglect, instability or repeated moves. Foster carers need proper training, respect, financial support and access to skilled professionals when things become difficult.
Josh MacAlister, Children’s minister, stated the investment would help bring fostering “into the 21st century”, by opening it up to a wider range of people and improving more children’s lives through stable homes.
The test now is whether this ambition reaches children quickly and carefully enough. The strongest reforms will be those shaped not only by systems and targets, but also by the voices of the people who know what care looks from the inside.
For Chanice, the lesson is simple. A weekend was never only a weekend. It was a beginning that evolved into a lasting relationship.
