What Coram Research Says About Foster Care in the UK

Updated

Coram's research position, as set out on its website, is that the UK government's target of creating 10,000 new foster care places over the current Parliament looks "realistic and attainable" — but only if it is matched by a serious focus on keeping the foster carers already in place. The finding comes from the Coram Institute for Children, Coram's research arm, and was published alongside the government's campaign launch.

The core finding

The Coram Institute for Children's assessment has two parts, and they need to be read together:

  • Recruitment target: Creating 10,000 additional foster care places across the Parliament is judged achievable. Coram does not dismiss the ambition as unrealistic.
  • Retention condition: The target "must be accompanied by a focus on retaining existing foster carers." Recruitment alone, in Coram's framing, is not a sufficient strategy.

The practical implication is that a campaign measured only in new places could miss the bigger problem: the supply of foster carers depends as much on people staying as on people starting.

Why retention is the sticking point

Coram's public materials do not publish the full methodology or carer-turnover figures behind this conclusion on the pages reviewed. What the site does make clear is the logic of the warning: if experienced carers leave at a similar rate to new ones being recruited, net capacity grows far more slowly than headline recruitment numbers suggest. That is why Coram frames retention as a condition of the target being met, not an optional extra.

For anyone using this research — a local authority planning recruitment, a journalist covering the campaign, or a prospective carer trying to understand the system — the takeaway is to track both numbers: new carers approved and existing carers retained.

Where this sits in Coram's wider work

The foster care research is one part of Coram's broader children's charity work, which the site describes as changing "lives, laws and systems to support children from infancy to independence." Related material on coram.org.uk includes:

  • Adoption research: Coram's Adoption Propensity Report analyses trends in adopter recruitment and finds the number of families available to adopt is substantially below the number needed for children still waiting — while public willingness to consider adoption remains comparatively high.
  • Adoption resources: Coram Adoption and a downloadable Adoption Toolkit, which the site says reflects the lived experiences of Coram ambassadors and offers adoptees a tool for reflection, guidance and support.
  • Care-experienced voices: the Speaking for Ourselves programme, funded by a £954,650 National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, to preserve stories of the UK's care-experienced movement from the 1970s onward.
  • Group news: Potential Plus UK transferring into the Coram Group.

How to use this if you need more detail

The summary above reflects what Coram has published publicly. If you need the underlying evidence — sample sizes, definitions of a "foster care place," or the retention data — the next step is to look for the full Coram Institute for Children report rather than the news summary. When reading it, check:

  1. How "places" are defined — new households approved versus total capacity.
  2. The retention baseline — what carer turnover rate the 10,000 figure is set against.
  3. Timeframe — the target is tied to the current Parliament, so the assessment is sensitive to when the clock starts.

Coram's own framing gives you the headline conclusion and the condition attached to it; the detailed numbers sit in the research publication itself.