Foster Carer Recruitment
“Fostering recruitment is one of the most emotionally and socially complex areas in the public sector. CAN’s work is not just about generating traffic — it’s about telling the truth, reaching the right people, and making every penny count for the children we serve. CAN’s use of AI, demographic tools, and SEO has enabled us to move away from outdated targeting models and towards more nuanced, data-informed strategies.”
Surrey Fostering Service
Surrey County Council
40+ council fostering services are currently using our tried and tested online recruitment strategy to generate quality enquiries from potential foster carers.
As a local authority fostering service you are in competition with Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs) to recruit new foster carers.
All councils and council-owned services like children’s trusts rely on IFAs and expensive residential provision when they don’t have enough of their own foster carers. Some councils place over 75% of their fostered children with IFAs.
Every council fostering service has the potential to redress these imbalances.
This is why CAN is different:
- Outcome-focused: We deliver what matters – enquiries from those potential leads most likely to become foster carers.
- Channel expertise: We use a large range of channels to ensure your service is visible to potential carers wherever they are online. And we continually optimise your campaign when it’s live – so we put your budget into the ads and channels that work best. Take a look at our case studies.
Google Ads and Search: reaching people already interested in fostering who are more likely to be quality leads.
Social media channels: where your audience is every day – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.
Targeted advertising: on news and lifestyle websites used by the people you want to reach.
- Remarketing: We show your adverts again to people who have clicked through to the landing page but not yet made an enquiry.
- Low cost: We consistently achieve very low cost per enquiry, and ultimately low cost per approved fostering household. We never waste budget on unproven and hard-to-measure advertising channels.
- Benchmarking: As we work with dozens of council fostering services, we can continually compare outcomes from each, learning what works and transferring this knowledge to your campaign.
- Fostering community: Our long-running, free to join Fostering Recruitment Hub keeps us in touch with all the latest issues from local authority teams around the UK. We also jointly organise an annual short fostering film to promote local authority fostering.
Fostering Recruitment Hub
Exclusively for fostering teams in councils and council-owned services
Hundreds of fostering professionals who are part of council foster carer recruitment and communications teams meet regularly for our free, informative webinars.
Issues covered range from creating the optimal landing page for maximum enquiries to streamlining assessments.
There are specific webinars dedicated to local authority fostering services in Scotland.
It is free to join the hub and to attend our webinars and face-to-face sessions.
You also get access to benchmarking services, which pool data from around the UK to determine the most efficient way to attract potential foster carers.
- Email John Cooper for more information and if you have any queries about the Fostering Recruitment Hub.
- Email Leanne Hughes for Scotland fostering campaign enquiries.
IFAs have a high quality online presence with engaging content, straightforward messaging and contact methods that are easy to find and use.
This is often lacking in councils’ fostering webpages.
We’ve developed a website template, now used by many council-owned fostering services, that delivers the same positive experience as an IFA website.
It features:
- Appealing visuals.
- Simple navigation.
- Prominent links to the most commonly searched for topics (such as pay and support).
- A straightforward contact form to maximise the number of enquiries.
- No limit to the number of landing pages for different campaigns (such as Foster Care Fortnight, Black History Month and LGBTQ+ Adoption & Fostering Week).
- Full support with hosting, maintenance, content updates and reporting.
A good customer journey is vital to keep potential foster carers onboard throughout the process.
There are many hurdles to getting foster carers approved. Some councils have room for improvement in how this is managed.
CAN has launched an Enquiry Management System (EMS) built specifically for local authority-led services and co-designed with 10 council fostering teams. It has been created with Placecube, experts in designing digital systems with local government.
There are many generic versions – often called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems – but, designed with retail customers in mind, they have limitations when applied to a public service like fostering.
Our EMS is:
- Affordable – with no added costs from unnecessary extra bells & whistles nor the expense, hassle & frustration of fixing issues in retrospect.
- Easy to use – running reports & keeping an eye on enquiries from the start to finish of a foster carer’s journey to their first placement.
- Purpose-built – with red/amber/green categories for actioning enquiries. And different permission levels for staff roles, automatic reminders for events and home visits, enquiries fed directly from website contact forms, and an audit trail of all actions and notes.
“CAN have delivered some great campaigns for us, which have contributed to good numbers of quality fostering enquiries. They are always looking for ways to improve the campaign. It's great to see an agency focus solely on the council's fostering outcomes and we welcome their expertise in this area of work.”
Senior Communications Officer
Hertfordshire County Council
Fostering Film Project
Annual award-winning short film that promotes local authority fostering
We jointly organise an annual film project to promote local authority fostering. The 2025 film is “The Run”. More than 80 councils and children’s trusts contributed to its funding.
It was developed with the help of people who have care experience and foster carers. It’s the story of 11-year-old Tom who is always running: away from danger, because he’s late and – at his happiest – representing his school in a race meeting.
It tackles themes of neglect, domestic violence and county lines. But shows Tom eventually coming into care and how his foster family provides the stability and security that allow him to thrive.
Each local authority fostering service who contributes to funding the annual film project gets their own branded version, plus a branded 30-second edit, five clips of up to 15 seconds long, which feature dramatic/emotional scenes from the film, plus image libraries from the film and ‘behind the scenes’ shots.
All this material is used to bolster marketing that encourages people from all walks of life to consider becoming a foster carer for their local authority.
Email John Cooper for more information about licensing the film for your local authority fostering recruitment.
Watch “The Run” – the 2025 fostering short film
Case Studies
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