Viennetta Basterfield, 67, spent two decades fostering more than 100 children in her west London home before she and her husband handed in the reins during Covid.
Her own mother had died when she was nine and she was brought up by another woman who took her in. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted to dedicate her life to passing that gift on to others.
“I can’t say I wasn’t frightened. Every single placement I was frightened because you think, are we going to be OK? Are they going to accept us?” she said. “But it was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. We still have a full house for Sunday dinners, for christmas, for birthdays.
“The greatest gift you can give a child is to show them that they matter.”
But she worries about the future of fostering – she said the bureaucracy around the process was putting people off, and younger generations had more reservations about doing it, especially juggling it with caring for their own children.
On Wednesday, the government is launching the country’s first national foster carer recruitment campaign, due to declining numbers at a time when there is a growing number of children in care.
The number of fostering households has dropped 10% since 2021, and the foster care population is ageing, with over one in three foster carers now aged 60 or over.
The appeal will target adults in their 30s and 40s, urging them “to open their hearts and homes to some of the most vulnerable children in society”, with the aim of creating 10,000 new foster care places by the end of this parliament.
It will run alongside trials of new foster care models, such as short-term “respite fostering” or fostering at weekends, which the government hopes will make it accessible to a wider range of people.
The children’s minister, Josh MacAlister, said he wanted the public to respond to the campaign in the same way many did to the Homes for Ukraine scheme, when hundreds opened their homes to refugees.
“There was this massive national moment where we understood that something was happening and people asked themselves, could we help? We need that kind of moment, to prompt people to have conversations in their homes,” he said.
“Lots of families won’t be able to do it, but we’re trying to open up fostering to a wider group of people, by making it intergenerational or part-time, for instance.”
He urged families not to wait for the “perfect moment”. “You’ve already got a lot of what it takes. Just step forward and start the process and see where you go,” he said.
“Unless we rapidly, dramatically expand the foster care system, we will end up with children waking up every single day in residential care who could be in a family home, and children who are sent to live miles away from where they’ve grown up.”
Speaking at an event ahead of the campagin at Downing Street on Tuesday, Marie-France van Heel, the prime minister’s wife, revealed for the first time that she had wanted to foster children.
She was put off the idea because of her husband’s job and feeling she had to “transform myself into a different type of person to be able to give foster care”. “This campaign is really trying to dispel some of those myths and misconceptions,” she said.
Fostering is the primary form of care for looked-after children in England. Out of 81,770 looked-after children, there are about 56,400 children in foster care at any one time.
New research by the Coram Institute for Children found over half a million adults want to foster and an estimated 3.4 million are interested.
Dame Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said there was a “substantial pool of people who are open to becoming foster carers” and the charity welcomed the government’s ambitious plans to recruit more.
Their research has identified certain groups with a higher fostering propensity who could be targeted, including women, larger households and those from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, particularly black households.
But there also needs to be a focus on retaining current foster carers as well as recruiting new ones, Homden said.
Research has shown a number of factors are pushing foster carers to leave the sector, including feeling undervalued or ignored by social workers, and financial strain – the Fostering Network found only 33% of carers report their allowances fully cover the cost of raising a child.
“We need to see a focus on targeting key areas and groups, clear information and practical support to boost both recruitment and retention of foster carers,” said Homden.
Polling by the Department for Education found that two-thirds (66%) of people believe they could be a good foster carer if practical barriers were removed.
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