Foster Care Uncovered

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...

This week, Sarah and Louise take an unflinching, slightly bemused, slightly furious wander through the week’s news before getting into the topic everyone tiptoes around in fostering: money. From Josh MacAlister’s so-called “clarification” that somehow made things worse, where asking for basic rights and protections is reframed as carers wanting to “clock on”, and he quietly positions himself as th...

This week, Sarah and Louise go full investigative mode on a brutal few days for foster carers, and the uncomfortable truths that slipped out of power. After the now viral “you don’t work / it’s not a job” moment exposed what the government really thinks of carers, they unpack why this isn’t just offensive, it’s catastrophic for retention, recruitment, and trust in the system. From a hastily arrang...

This week, Sarah and Louise don’t soften a single edge. They dismantle the government’s latest fostering “reforms” piece by piece, not the press release version, but the reality behind it. The language. The choreography. The careful tone. And what it’s really doing. They unpack the surge of anger across the workforce, but more importantly, the shift from emotion to evidence. Foster carers aren’t j...

This week, Sarah and Louise kick off a hard-hitting series on allegations against foster carers. We unpack why these claims aren’t just a carer problem. They’re a system-wide crisis affecting recruitment, retention, and children’s lives. From the shocking numbers that rarely get shared to the step-by-step failures of the allegations process, we explore the real impact on safeguarding, on carers' m...

This week, Sarah and Louise pull no punches. They’re calling out the foster care sector’s obsession with shiny recruitment schemes while ignoring the real fulcrum of the system: retention. From exposing local authorities’ latest “retention” gimmicks to unpicking a decade-old policy disaster that still fails carers and children today, nothing is off-limits. Sarah takes us back to the 2014 Staying P...

In this episode of Foster Care Uncovered, Sarah and Louise delve into the shocking new report from the Children’s Commissioner, which reveals the harsh reality many children in foster care face today. From illegal and unsafe placements to carers under extreme pressure, this report lays bare systemic failures that can no longer be ignored. Sarah and Louise break down the report, share frontline ins...

Sarah and Louise take an unapologetically unfiltered look at foster care in 2025, the achievements, the bloopers, the ‘persons’ of the year, what needed to stop, what made them laugh, the moments that kept them going, and the low points that still defy explanation. They call out what mattered, dismantle what didn’t, and interrogate the absurdities. Looking to 2026, they ask the questions the secto...

A Foster Care Uncovered Christmas Special Festive hats on, rose-tinted myths off. In this Christmas special, we take a tongue-in-cheek but honest look at support during the festive period. Alongside plenty of foster carer humour, Louise reflects on Christmas at 16 after running away, and we explore trauma, contact, cost-of-living pressures, and the realities of Christmas for children in care. Plus...

In this episode, Sarah and Louise sit down with social worker Nana Abbey-Hagen, a practitioner who moves fluently between frontline reality, leadership conversations, and the community spaces where social work and lived experience intersect. Nana talks candidly about working conditions for social workers and whether those pressures ripple into foster care. We explore his work with the Chief Social...

In this episode, Sarah and Louise roll right back to the start and take a deep dive into the Form F assessment, what it was meant to be, why it’s drifting so far from purpose, and how it’s shaping (and in too many cases misshaping) foster care, culture, and recruitment today. There’s a lot of serious ground to cover…and, as always with Sarah and Louise, just enough humour to keep the edges from ge...

Indefensible unforgivable. Sarah & Louise take apart today’s Government fostering stats - exposing the spin behind the headlines and the failings despite millions of taxpayer investment. All views shared in this podcast reflect the personal opinions of the hosts alone. They are not intended as factual assertions about any person or organisation, nor do they represent the views of any employer...

Welcome to the second episode of Foster Care Uncovered. Today, Louise Allen & Sarah Anderson are joined by Dr Joe Hanley, a social worker, lecturer, researcher and author, as we take an unflinching look at the stranglehold some people and organisations have on our sector. It is quite the eye-opener, especially around the role of the new Children's Minister in these networks. Join us as we ask....