Nottinghamshire County Council sees more foster carers signing up than leaving for first time since pandemic
Nottinghamshire County Council has had more foster carers joining the service than leaving for the first time since before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The authority says in the past six months, fewer foster carers have left the council, with an increase in applications and approvals – resulting in an increase in foster carers in March 2025 – the first rise since before the pandemic.
Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham City Council, Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council are currently running a joint campaign to recruit more foster carers for the local authorities.
Its new name is ‘Foster for East Midlands Councils’. It was originally launched in March 2024, with money coming from the four member councils and the Department for Education.
An update on the project was discussed in Nottinghamshire County Council’s Corporate Parenting Panel on Tuesday (April 1). The meeting was told the scheme will now be funded for the next year until March 2026.
Panel papers also noted – as a national issue – that more foster carers are leaving their duties compared to new foster carers being recruited.
Reports read: “This trend in Nottinghamshire has now plateaued since October 2024 and we are hoping to break this national trend by showing an increase in foster carers overall in the next 6 months.”
Information supplied to the Local Democracy Reporting Service shows in the first three months of 2025, only three foster carers stopped their duties for reasons such as retirement, personal circumstances and one looked after person transitioning to adult social care as they turned 18.
In the same period, six new foster carer households were approved to look after the authority’s looked-after children.
Applications to become foster carers also appear to be on the rise, with nine applications January and March 2025 compared to four in the same period in 2024.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, panel member Councillor Mike Introna said efforts to increase fostering in the county is “going in the right direction”.
He said: “[We’ve] got a considerably higher number of people across hurdles to become foster parents- the general consensus from us as councillors is that the direction of travel is going in right direction.”
Mr Introna questioned if there was more that could be done to support foster carers and encourage others to sign up to the service.
He said: “Stuff like free bus travel, possible assistance with healthcare, maybe long service payments, or accrue a payment each year you’re a foster carer.”
This was echoed by fellow panel member Anne Callaghan who, speaking to the LDRS, said: “How can we incentivise [fostering]? It might be looking at increasing pay, looking at further training, a pension scheme.”
As of April 3 there are 187 foster carers working for the council’s service compared to 194 this time last year, but there are also 59 fewer looked after children in the council’s care with 900 currently.
Speaking on the importance of children in care being cared for in a home environment, Mrs Callaghan said: “We do have quite a lot of children in care, we don’t want them out of area either, we want them close to home.
“For whatever reason family relationships broke down, these children have come into care and they still need to have their local links. Some of them still need to attend the school their friends are, that’s their one constant in their life sometimes and it’s really important.”
Of the applications received by the collaborative council project, Nottinghamshire County Council had 22 (26%) of them allocated for assessment for people to become new foster carers for the authority.
These assessments follow the national standard of taking between six and eight months to reach the approval stage.
