What’s working in fostering?

This is the follow-up to my previous posts for Foster Care Fortnight 2026 (Part One: What do you know about fostering? & Part Two: What surprises you about fostering?).

“What’s working” sits at an awkward angle. Say it too loudly, and you risk sounding like everything’s fine. It isn’t. Stay quiet, and you'll miss the things that keep families alive.

So here’s where I’ve landed. Three things that are working. Not perfectly. Not universally. But working.

1. A (genuinely) therapeutic approach

I didn’t discover therapeutic parenting. I followed people who did.

Sarah Naish had already raised five children using a therapeutic, trauma-informed approach. She’d written the books and lived the reality. I read everything she wrote.

Sarah Dillon explained it from the other side. As a former child in care, she could articulate why the approach worked when I couldn’t yet see the logic. When my instinct was to do something different, I held onto her voice telling me to trust it.

And the countless others I would happily list for the rest of this article, from clinical psychologists (those I’ve met and those I’ve read), to educators, friends, family, care-experienced people who continue to steer me in the right direction… far too many to mention.

And then it started showing up in my own home. A child who stopped escalating because I’d learned to ask “Are we ok?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?” A child who began to trust because I’d stopped matching their chaos with my own.

I now get to watch this happen every week with the families I work with.

This is what’s working.

But here’s what sits badly with me: some foster parents still have to fight for this. Fight for the information. Fight for the training. Fight for a team around them who understand trauma. We know so much more now about what a therapeutic approach actually looks like. The gap between a catchphrase on a brochure and genuine therapeutic practice is the gap between thriving in fostering and being destroyed by it.

The words aren’t enough. I’ve seen the difference when it’s real, and I’ve seen the damage when it’s marketing. We know better now. It’s time to go all in.

2. Family court

I didn’t think I would survive family court.

On more than one occasion, it nearly broke me. The weight of it. The relentlessness. There were days when I lost the ability to see a way through.

But it saved us.

Here’s what I’ve learned. Family court is the one place where the local authority doesn’t hold all the power. In the day-to-day, a social work team can make decisions that change a child’s future without consulting anyone. No requirement to hear from the foster parent. No obligation to speak to the teacher who sees that child every day. No duty to check with the therapist.

In court, that can change. Evidence is reviewed from across the team around the child. Foster parents, teachers, therapists, supervising social workers… their voices carry weight. Uninformed social workers are forced to work as part of a team rather than above one.

That’s what’s working.

It shouldn’t take a judge in a courtroom to make professionals collaborate. That’s absurd. But until we build something better into the everyday system, family court remains the one mechanism that forces the right conversations to happen.

No single social work team should be able to change a child’s future without consulting the people who actually know that child.

3. A softer landing from the care cliff

The care cliff is still real.

For too long, the pattern was brutally simple: turn 18, and the support vanishes. The home, the relationships, the stability… gone. Young people who’d survived more than most adults ever will, were handed a bin bag and a room in supported accommodation and told to get on with it.

I can’t celebrate while children are still falling.

But something is shifting.

There’s now a more logical path for young people leaving care. Not perfect, not universal, but real. Staying Put (When I’m Ready, here in Wales) arrangements that let young people remain with their foster families past 18. Extended support that recognises what should have been obvious all along: a traumatised 18-year-old who’s spent years in care needs more support than a typical 18-year-old, not less.

It’s moving in the right direction. From some angles, anyway.

We need to protect this progress. Every child who avoids the cliff matters. But we’re not done until the cliff is gone for every child, not just some of them.

What do you feel is working in fostering? What do we get right? What do we need more of?

Join me in the next edition when I’ll be writing about: What isn’t working in fostering?