Get involved in Foster Care Fortnight 2026

Illustrated Foster Care Fortnight banner showing a family on a balancing beam with icons of home and care, text reading “This is fostering” and #FCF26.

Foster Care Fortnight (FCF) runs from 11 to 24 May and is a national campaign that shines a spotlight on fostering by celebrating the valuable role of foster carers and encouraging others to consider it.

Alongside the national campaign, we’ll be running our own promotional activities, and there are lots of ways you can get involved.

During FCF, we’ll be running a range of local promotional activities to celebrate foster carers, raise awareness of fostering, and encourage more people to consider it.

These include 4 ‘Cuppa with a Carer’ information sessions, giving people who are interested in fostering the chance to find out more by chatting with those who know the role best – our foster carers.

If you know someone who may be interested in fostering, please encourage them to come along to one of our sessions:

As a reminder, foster carers receive a £300 thank-you payment for every person they refer who goes on to be approved as a foster carer through our ‘Refer a Friend’ scheme, with no limit on referrals. Please make sure your name is mentioned at the point of enquiry.

As foster carers, your experience and local connections make a real difference to our recruitment efforts. Your voices help start conversations and show others what fostering really means.

If you’d like to do more to support Foster Care Fortnight, we’ve created a simple, optional toolkit to help you promote fostering through your networks, including:

a digital poster which can be emailed or printed,
ready-to-use editorial, which you can submit for inclusion in your local newsletter or parish magazine,
an adventure-themed social media graphic to share with friends or community pages, and
a ‘chat to me about fostering’ graphic, also suitable for social media.

You might choose to share something in a local newsletter, ask a school or community group to include a post in their communications, display a poster on a local noticeboard, or even offer to talk about fostering at a local event or coffee morning. Even small conversations can help raise awareness and keep children closer to their communities.

There’s no expectation to take part – getting involved is entirely voluntary. The toolkit is there to make things easier if you would like to help.

If you have any questions, would like to talk through an idea, or need additional resources such as banners, leaflets or event materials, please email Michelle Mitchell, Fostering Communications Officer, at michelle.mitchell@somerset.gov.uk.

Thank you, as always, for everything you do to support children and young people, and for helping us make Foster Care Fortnight a positive celebration of fostering.