This is Not Just Fostering…
It’s Foster Care Fortnight from 11th-24th May – the UK’s largest campaign aimed at raising awareness about fostering, and the celebration and appreciation of foster carers who put their hearts into the everyday care, support and advocacy for children.
The Fostering Network’s ‘This Is Fostering’ Campaign
The very route of Foster Care Fortnight lies with The Fostering Network, a charity and membership organisation that was founded by foster carers, for foster carers. It provides help, guidance and support for both carers and fostering services. It is often viewed as an overarching information ‘hub’ that can signpost to different resources, and help people to find a local fostering provider.
Their annual Foster Care Fortnight campaign is always centred around a theme. For 2026, that theme is This Is Fostering – and at its heart, it is about ‘celebrating and raising awareness of the different stories across the fostering community’.
The campaign contains three threads:
- A focus on the everyday experiences of fostering, and the positive impact that foster carers have.
- An acknowledgement of the key pressures currently affecting foster carers, such as sporadic support, low fostering allowances and feeling excluded from the decision-making process with regards to the children in their care.
- A collaborative ‘call-to-action’ for the government to make meaningful changes within the fostering sector.
Here at TACT, we fully support these areas of focus – particularly as they tie in with some of our key approaches and strategies as a charitable fostering agency.
From ‘This Is Fostering’ To ‘This Is Not Just Fostering…’
The campaign theme of This Is Fostering, along with its three strands, is compelling in it itself. It already carries some top-level calls to action, and highlights key areas of work for the sector. However, we felt there was an opportunity to build on that strong foundation – to go just that little bit deeper into what fostering truly is, to brush away the myths and the preconceived ideas.
To do this, we created a leading question, enabling us to sidestep the stating of what fostering is – inviting instead the diversity, the compelling and the everyday. We wanted to encourage our foster carers and staff to hone in on the inspiring stories and the amazing outcomes that can sometimes get lost under the general term of fostering.
All too often, the term ‘fostering’ can feel broad or abstract, masking the smaller breakthroughs, the success stories and the relationships that are at the core of foster care.
This is why we created ‘This Is Not Just Fostering…’; to prompt our teams of foster carers and staff to complete the sentence in a meaningful way personal to their fostering journey. Whether it’s about taking a young person to a sports event for the first time, or simply sitting down together for a meal as a fostering household – it’s about amplifying individual voices to paint a fuller, more nuanced picture of fostering. A picture that connects the extraordinary with the everyday.
This Is Not Just Fostering…This Is 30 Years of Making A Difference
“Bill and I started fostering in 1992, simply because we wanted to make a difference to the lives of children in need. In the early days of fostering we were with an agency run by a gentleman called Jim Armstrong who went on to establish TACT. So we were really part of the birth of TACT and we are very proud to be the charity’s longest serving foster carers.”
Rose & Bill, TACT Foster Carers Since 1992
The stories and experiences that our foster carers and staff have already shared have made us smile, brought us to tears and have made us proud to be the UK’s largest dedicated fostering charity. They are an emotional reminder of why we do what we do, and truly are a reflection of the dedication of each of us to make a difference in children’s lives.
We encourage foster carers, fostering staff and care-experienced young people everywhere to consider the ‘This Is Not Just Fostering…’ prompt.
How would you complete the sentence?
