We’re excited to announce the launch of Making Spaces, a new grant programme designed to help foster carers increase their room capacity to welcome more children into their homes.

The Making Spaces grants are intended to support our foster carers to bring an existing room into use for a foster child, or to create a new room altogether. This might involve subdividing a larger room or repurposing a space currently used for something else – such as a home office.*

The scheme is about removing barriers and making it possible for carers to continue fostering or to offer a home to another child who needs one. Although it’s only recently launched, the scheme is already having a meaningful impact, with 11 applications received to date.

How Carol and Peter used Making Spaces to continue fostering

Carol and Peter, who have been fostering in Yorkshire and the North East for 15 years, were the first household to use our scheme and received support for a bedroom transformation, splitting one room into two.

The children they have fostered are now all old enough to transition out of care and into Special Guardianship, which is a legal route for long-term care where a child lives permanently with the foster carer. Carol and Peter would then have had four children in a five-bedroom house all under Special Guardianship, meaning they were having to consider resigning from fostering – as they had no space for additional children.

Carol said: “The results are amazing – as it means after 15 years with TACT we do not have to resign and can offer another young person a home.”

Carol, Peter and their children are so excited to welcome a new young person in their home and “without TACT’s help this would not have been possible.”

Peter and Sarah’s garden room allowed siblings to be reunited

South West foster carers, Peter and Sarah, also benefited from the scheme by building a garden room for their birth son, which allowed foster siblings to be reunited in their home.

They said: “The support we received was incredible. Our usual Supervising Social Worker was off at the time, and the person who stepped in was determined to make it happen. Everyone involved benefited, especially the children.”

TACT’s CEO, Andy Elvin, stated: “As a not-for-profit fostering charity, we reinvest any surplus we make back into supporting our carers and the young people we care for. We are committed to investing where it makes the greatest difference so that we can continue to improve outcomes for our young people, and support our carers in continuing to provide the highest quality of care.

“Through the “Making Spaces” scheme, we have used that surplus to provide grants that help carers adapt their homes, repurpose existing space and create new rooms to enable them to continue fostering with us, and keep siblings together in a family environment. We very much look forward seeing more families benefit from the scheme in the months ahead.”

The Making Spaces Scheme reflects our ongoing commitment to listening to carers and creating positive long-term outcomes for our young people. We look forward to seeing many more families benefit from the scheme in the months ahead.

*All projects must result in bedroom space that meets national fostering regulations.