Foster Care Uncovered

This week on Foster Care Uncovered, Sarah and Louise are delighted to be in conversation with Tim Barclay, CEO of National Fostering Group, the UK's largest independent fostering provider. NFG plays a significant role in the future of fostering. Tim joined as CEO in January 2025, bringing decades of senior leadership experience, and has been spending time meeting foster carers, listening to their...

They Sold You Out! You’re just the Cash Cow This week, The Fostering Network meets with the National Union of Professional Foster Carers, then goes straight to the DfE to dob them in. So what exactly was said, why did they dob the union in, and whose side are they really on? Then we look at the money, appointments, and cosy connections in the fostering establishment, and ask who benefits while car...

The Gloves Are Off...Is the old order cracking? This week, Sarah and Louise ask whether the old order in fostering is finally beginning to crack. From the Government’s 10,000-carer recruitment campaign to the growing row over who represents foster carers, we examine the spin, the power plays and the rise of independent carer-led voices challenging the status quo. On the Naughty Step, we take on a...

The Big Lie: The Spin, Promises & Propaganda Behind the Latest Government Launch This week, Sarah and Louise take apart Josh MacAlister’s grand launch of the Government’s national fostering recruitment campaign. Millions for recruitment, promises of 10,000 new places, glossy videos and a Minister claiming to have rewritten a rulebook that has no rules. They examine the furious reaction from ex...

Breaking News! The 3.4m funding scandal they can’t spin This week, Sarah and Louise get into the breaking news the fostering sector really needs to talk about: the Government’s evaluation of the North East Regional Fostering Recruitment Hub, the Pathfinder meant to show everyone else how regional recruitment should work. Except the independent evaluation found no statistically significant evidence...

Are you a ‘Difficult’ Carer? - Speak Up for Children. Get Labelled. Get Targeted. This week Sarah and Louise are talking about ‘difficult’ foster carers, the ones who ask awkward questions, challenge decisions and dare to advocate for children. But what happens when speaking up gets you labelled ‘difficult’? And why does that word carry rather more weight than it might appear? We also look at the...

You're “Just” a Foster Carer & Revolving Door Failed Leadership; They Move Around. So Does the Damage. You’re “JUST” a foster carer. A word that tells you an awful lot about how foster carers are still viewed by parts of the care system. This week Sarah and Louise unpack the “just” that diminishes foster carers, the weaponisation of experience, and why carers are expected to behave like profes...

Big Brother or Accountability? CCTV, Body Cams and Someone’s Back on the Naughty Step This week, Sarah and Louise are back with the cynicism dial turned all the way up, and, for the first time, Sarah and Louise find themselves firmly on opposite sides of one of the biggest debates in fostering right now, and let’s just say, it gets lively! Do Sarah and Louise fall out or disagree agreeably? Westmi...

The Rules Don’t Apply to Everyone: Unchecked Power – Part 2 This week on Foster Care Uncovered , Sarah and Louise go from the supposedly boring world of new fostering standards to one of the most uncomfortable questions in children’s social care: what happens to the truth when one side holds most of the power? Can power create a culture where the truth becomes… flexible? Not necessarily because an...

Do Social Workers Have Too Much Power? What Unchecked Power Does to Ordinary People. This week Sarah and Louise ask a difficult but important question: what happens when any profession is given significant authority without enough challenge, accountability or independent scrutiny? Before anyone jumps to conclusions, this is not an attack on social workers. Far from it. Thousands of dedicated socia...

While the Westminster set enjoy salmon blinis, caviar and £100 bottles of Pol Roger, the people holding children’s social care together are exhausted, undervalued and walking away. This week on Foster Care Uncovered, Sarah and Louise look at the politics behind children’s social care reform, the arrival of new leadership, and whether the promise of listening to people beyond Westminster will final...

The Exploitation of Foster Carers: How Has It Become Normalised? This week, Sarah and Louise begin by unpacking the latest fostering news, including the Government's latest announcement on Regional Care Co-operatives, what it really means for foster carers, and the proposed rewrite of the National Minimum Standards. Is this genuine reform, or simply another restructure that leaves the real problem...

This week, Sarah and Louise examine the unprecedented warning from Scotland's senior social work leaders, who’ve exposed that children are being taken home by social workers because there are no available placements. They explore how years of ignored warnings have led to this point, and why the real crisis may be retention rather than recruitment. They also unpack the growing controversy around pr...

Sarah and Louise take their irreverent look and roll back the curtains on another week in fostering. They start with leadership, language, and the familiar gap between what is announced and what is actually felt in foster families. From political reshuffles to sector promises, they ask what all the noise really means for children and carers on a Tuesday afternoon when support is needed, and someon...

This week, Sarah and Louise are joined by John Pearce OBE for a wide-ranging and deeply reflective conversation about the state of children’s social care and where it may be heading next. John brings decades of experience at the forefront of children’s services leadership, including his time as Director of Children’s Services in Durham, and is widely known for his clear-sighted, often challenging...

This week, Sarah and Louise open with a candid, slightly irreverent look at what’s been making waves in the sector, the stories behind the headlines, the language being used, and the questions few people are saying out loud. At the heart of the conversation is a deeper exploration of how control shows up in subtle, often unspoken ways, and why some of the systems designed to support children and c...

This week, Sarah and Louise take on one of foster care's biggest elephants in the room: "Them and Us". For years, carers have spoken about a growing divide between those providing care and those controlling the system. Yet whenever the subject is raised, many insist the divide doesn't exist. So who's right? Drawing on frontline experience, sector news, survey data and some uncomfortable questions,...

This week on Foster Care Uncovered, Sarah and Louise tackle the growing culture crisis inside fostering. From Josh MacAlister’s latest social media backlash and the controversy around foster carer pay messaging, to the Government’s new Practice Guide for supporting foster carers, they ask a bigger question: why does fostering increasingly feel like a system more focused on managing narratives than...

In this episode of Foster Care Uncovered , Louise and Sarah return with their now-notorious mix of news, commentary and uncomfortable honesty as they take on the sector’s latest headlines, contradictions and carefully polished narratives. The episode opens with news from across the fostering landscape, including shifting government messaging, growing confusion around regional reforms, and the incr...

This week, Sarah and Louise are joined by Rebekah Pierre, Deputy Director of Article 39, care-experienced author, social worker, and one of the most important voices shaping the national conversation on children’s social care, who brings both authority and professional and lived experience to the table. Her work spans frontline practice, policy influence, and powerful storytelling, most recently t...

In this episode, Sarah and Louise return after half term with a frank conversation about what’s really happening in fostering today. They start with powerful listener feedback that reflects a growing sense of recognition. For many carers, these conversations are finally putting words to experiences that have long been lived in silence. We then turn to the latest Sky documentary on allegations in f...

This week, Sarah and Louise continue the conversation on foster carers' mental health, and go even deeper into what’s really happening behind the scenes. In Part 2, they explore the systemic pressures driving stress, anxiety, and silence across the sector, from fear of allegations to the reality of job insecurity and constant scrutiny. With powerful, honest contributions from foster carers, this e...

In this episode , Sarah and Louise start up a crucial conversation - the mental health of foster carers. Behind the role is constant emotional labour, exposure to trauma, and the pressure to keep going, even when it’s hard. They explore how this affects carers over time, the signs to look out for, and why so many people feel they have to carry it quietly. Because if we want stable homes and a secu...

In this episode of Foster Care Uncovered , Sarah and Louise pull back the curtain on what foster carers really experience, and why the system’s promises of support often fall short. From the quietly creeping national foster carer register to the realities of supervision, breaks, mental health, and training, they reveal the gap between policy and practice. Sarah and Louise explore what real, effect...

This week, Sarah and Louise tackle one of the most hidden crises in fostering, allegations against foster carers. For decades, foster carers have quietly shared stories of false or retaliatory allegations, stories that were often dismissed as overemotional or anecdotal. In this episode, they unpack the scale of the problem, over 30,000 carers have been caught in a system that can devastate careers...