FosterSupport

25/08/2026

23/08/2026

I'm feeling a bit sad this morning.

We've witnessed some truly awful behaviour towards some of our members by a local authority in the past few weeks.

Zero care. Zero compassion. Zero responsibility and accountability.

Now we're onto the blame game.

I genuinely don't understand it.

Are they even human?

The blame game will fail. Spectacularly. We have way too much evidence against them. Carefully collected and meticulously recorded as we provided daily support to our members during their dreadful ordeal. They have absolutely no defence.

The social workers and managers in this local authority (which I'm not naming yet to keep the case confidential) are the perfect example of why there is and will continue to be a retention crisis.

We will successfully support our members, and to be blunt, we will wipe the floor with this LA, but who would want to contunue to foster for such callous, unprofessional individuals?

When this case is published it's yet another collective nail in the recruitment coffin.

Don't blame the messenger. Be angry with perpetrators of the recruitment and retention crisis. The people who treat THEIR foster carers like dirt on the bottom of their shoe.



Sigh.

Jane

22/08/2026

Good morning 😊

It's time to tell you about something that I've been working very hard on in the background. At the end of August my book will be published.

It's a young adult sci fi fantasy which I actually wrote 16 years ago and it gets a mention in my Form F assessment and panel notes.

I've decided to take the leap and publish it because people say that it's really good but also as one of the ways to raise funds for free cover for you all so that we can fight injustice on a bigger scale.

Here's the first of the social media pages. I made this one so our social media and IT team will probably cringe at the awful quality but I'll let them improve it. 😬

Want to help us move to free subscriptions?

Like and follow our pages and share the book ..once it's published.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1D8xVS2PX6/

CEO of FosterSupport. Carer, an activist, a mother, shared lives carer and now an author.

I've always loved science fiction and the mysteries of the universe and I've loved writing about the things which interest me. I hope that you enjoy it too.

21/08/2026

What do you think about the proposed new national minimum standards?

I'm meeting with the team drafting them next week to discuss them.

In my meeting this week with another DfE team I said that there's too much wriggle room leaving room for services to apply their own interpretation and ignore them.

While there's some good things in there, it's too vague and I feel that it actually takes away some of our tools we use to hold services to account.

I think that may be my legal training brain talking. But in my world leaving space for fostering services to "get creative" isn't a good thing when it comes to allegedly trying to solve the retention crisis.

We need clear policies, guidance and regulations.

Anything less is a disaster for retention.

Jane

19/08/2026

You don't have to navigate everything alone.

Remember you must be a member before the allegations started.

Don't leave it too late. Join FosterSupport today - https://www.fostersupport.co.uk/

18/08/2026

I have a meeting with Department for Education officials this morning.

This meeting is to unpick the every day issues our members face when navigating Internet and mobile phone safety for the children in their care.

Safeguarding versus human rights and privacy.

The never ending seesaw foster carers are expected to navigate while constantly dodging the ever looming threat of an allegation or standards of care investigation for whatever choice they make in an impossible situation.

We need clarity.

We need policies and guidance at a national level.

I intend to get it for you.

Jane

14/08/2026

We’ve all heard it:

“Oh, I could never foster because I’d get too attached.”

And every time, I wonder…

Do people somehow think foster parents don’t get attached?

Because we do.

We absolutely do.

We love children who come into our homes. We worry about them. We celebrate their tiny victories. We lose sleep over them. We laugh with them, advocate for them, comfort them and, yes, sometimes we cry when things don’t go the way we desperately hoped they would.

Children don’t need adults who stay distant so that leaving will hurt less.

They need adults who are willing to get close.

They need to experience what it feels like to be safe with someone. To be cared for. To be listened to. To matter. To form a healthy, trusting attachment with an adult who consistently shows up for them.

Attachment isn’t something foster parents should be afraid of.

For many children in care, safe attachment is something they desperately need to experience.

Yes, loving a child you may one day have to say goodbye to can hurt like hell.

But perhaps the question shouldn’t be “How do I avoid getting attached?”

Perhaps it should be:

“How can I give this child the safest, most loving attachment I possibly can, for however long they need me?”

Foster parents — what would you say to someone who tells you they could never foster because they’d get too attached? ❤️

And if you’re a foster parent reading this and thinking, “Yes… but nobody talks about how hard that attachment can be” — we see you.

At Foster Support, we’re here to stand beside you through those moments too.

The joy. The worry. The attachment. The uncertainty. The heartbreak.

We understand. And you don’t have to navigate it alone. ❤️

11/08/2026

Didn't someone once say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Welcome to a typical week in fostering services around the UK.

Help we don't have enough foster carers!!!

We need somewhere for little Johnny.

There's only Mr and Mrs Smith and they can't manage little Johnny's needs.

That's OK let's not tell them.

2 months later....

Help we don't have enough foster carers we need somewhere for little Johnny.

Why what happened?

Oh there's a standards of care/allegation against Mr and Mrs Smith so they won't be fostering anymore.

Oh well never mind.

There's only Mrs Jones but she can't meet his needs especially as a single carer.

Let's not tell her...

Rinse and repeat.

Weekly complaining at management level about the lack of availability and the vast cost of alternative provision. Tick.

Accountability. Not so much.

09/08/2026

Help me make sense of this.

Social workers are demanding better protection for themselves. They previously asked to be included in Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018.

I know that this will be distressing to many foster carers.

Why?

Because these are the very same "professionals" who quite frankly could not care less about the safety and wellbeing of the foster carers they are supposed to support.

Having your home smashed to pieces? Tough.

Being targeted by birth family? Tough.

Car torched? Windows smashed? Arson? Fractured skull?

Not happy about it?

How dare you! That's a standards of care/ allegation from us!

And the classic "are you sure that you're cut out to be a foster carer?"

Yes this happens all the time, we're dealing with cases at the moment where services are callous and accusatory. I talked about it on Radio 4 Woman's Hour where the social worker guest so kindly displayed the defensive callousness I was highlighting, with her astonishing "only 2 foster carers have been killed I checked" comment.

This cognitive dissonance is a pervasive cancer amongst social workers in fostering services and it must end.

Social workers' lives and wellbeing are not more valuable than foster carers.

Jane

"It is incumbent on us, as social work’s professional body, to work with trade unions, national regulators and social work leadership across the UK to help strengthen protections for professionals, improve staffing levels to reduce risk, and promote a zero-tolerance approach to all forms of abuse."

BASW seeks profession’s views to improve safety at work