Fostering Recruitment Digital Solutions

As announced in Renewing Fostering: homes for 10,000 more children, the Department for Education (DfE) is exploring how digital solutions can support the successful onboarding of prospective foster carers, to minimise drop-off points caused by delays in communication about progress and outcomes, and enable richer data on fostering recruitment through to approvals to support decision-making at a local and national level. To deliver on the ambitious plan, we have engaged with the market to seek the development of an end-to-end digital solution that can: • Provide clear expectations of a standardised recruitment process across data and operating expectations. • Enable the gathering of rich and consistent data on the Hub fostering recruitment process and pipeline, supporting effective data sharing between DfE, Hubs, local authorities and other relevant agencies, and helping to better target interventions and efforts where they are most needed. • Create platforms and infrastructure to allow prospective foster carers to make an application and manage it throughout the fostering application process, from initial enquiry to approval (this may include making contact with their fostering service, booking appointments and monitoring the progress of their application online). • Provide a solution to help Fostering Hubs and local authorities to manage prospective foster carers through the application process through real-time insights and by engaging relevant agencies to support the onboarding process. • Provide a simple and secure customer journey that allows for interoperability where necessary, enabling improved data sharing and portability of applications across fostering services, while also strengthening the overall digital and data capability across the system. Following the preliminary market engagement, DfE will be taking forward development of the end-to-end recruitment service in-house. This will enable us to define key requirements and expectations, while working closely with Regional Care Co-operatives, Fostering Hubs and Local Authorities to develop the necessary infrastructure. We do, however, intend to continue engaging with the sector as we develop key components of the service. At this stage, the precise scope, scale and timing of any future procurement activity remain under consideration.