About us

About Fosterline

Fosterline is a free, independent advice and information service that offers support to both current and prospective foster carers in England. It has been in place since 2006, funded by the Department for Education, and delivered by The Fostering Network.

Fosterline aims to support prospective foster carers in their journey to approval through providing impartial and easy to access information. We also provide independent, free support to existing foster carers to help them in their vital role in transforming children’s lives.

If Fosterline can’t help – for example, if you need specialist legal, financial or medical advice – our advisers will help you find someone who can, by signposting you onto other relevant sources of support.

About The Fostering Network

The Fostering Network is the UK’s leading fostering charity. We are the essential network for fostering, bringing together everyone who is involved in foster care.

We support foster carers to help transform children’s lives and we work with fostering services and the wider sector to develop and share best practice. We work to ensure all children and young people in foster care experience stable family life, and we are passionate about the difference foster care makes.

We champion fostering and seek to create vital change so that foster care is the very best it can be.

Learn more about The Fostering Network

Customer Service Charter

The Fostering Network has a Customer Service Charter which sets out our commitment to delivering excellent customer service to everyone who contacts Fosterline.

Staffing

Fosterline is staffed by highly experienced advisers with extensive knowledge of the fostering sector. Many of our advisers have personal experience of foster care or are qualified social workers.

Confidentiality

Fosterline provides advice and support to foster carers in confidence in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018. We do not share any personal information about the people who contact us with anyone else without express consent.

The only exception to this is where information is disclosed that would indicate a child or other person is at risk. In these circumstances, we will follow The Fostering Network’s safeguarding policy and procedure, which may include disclosing relevant information to external agencies.

Record keeping

Fosterline maintains all records in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR. All calls are monitored for quality and training purposes and all communications are logged on our secure customer records management system.

Comments, compliments, and complaints

The Fostering Network is committed to providing the best possible service to everyone who contacts us. We welcome your comments about what we're doing well, and suggestions on how we might improve. The Fostering Network has a compliments and complaints procedure which is available online and upon request.

We welcome any feedback you would like to give around your experience of Fosterline. You can fill in our feedback form here.

How are we doing?