Decision details

Councillor Walmsley introduced the report seeking approval for Bury Council to join the expanded Greater Manchester End-to-End Fostering Hub, hosted by Rochdale Borough Council, which would manage fostering recruitment, assessment and approval functions on behalf of all ten Greater Manchester authorities and is a corner stone of the GM Regional Care Cooperative, leading on the commissioning and sufficiency of homes for children in care.

Councillor Walmsley highlighted that Bury, like other councils across Greater Manchester, faces increasing challenges in recruiting and retaining foster carers. This has contributed to greater reliance on costly residential placements and external provision. The proposed model aims to increase the number of approved foster carers through a more consistent, specialist and regional approach.

Councillor Rydeheard commented that it is a positive thing to retain kinship element.

Decision(s)

Cabinet:

·       Endorsed the proposal for the transition from the current Greater Manchester Fostering Recruitment Hub model to an end-to-end regional fostering hub model hosted by Rochdale Council.

·       Noted the national policy context, including the Government's ambition to create 10,000 additional fostering placements and the associated Department for Education funding opportunities available to participating authorities.

·       Noted and agreed the delegation of agreement by the Director of Children’s Services (in consultation with other authorities and the portfolio holder for Children’s Services and the S151 officer) of the proposed funding formula and resource contributions for fiscal years 2026/27 and 2027/28.

·       Noted and agreed the proposed HR recommendation on 2-year secondment opportunities for the staff in scope. Secondment is subject to staff in scope consenting.

·       Delegated authority to the Director of Children's Services, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Children's Services and Education and the Monitoring Officer, to implement those arrangements and approve any operational matters necessary for their delivery.

Reasons for decision(s) 

·       Securing sufficient fostering households remains a significant challenge for Bury and across Greater Manchester and beyond. By the end of 2024/25, the number of Greater Manchester children in mainstream fostering placements was 7% lower than six years earlier, with a sharper 10% reduction in in-house mainstream placements. Over the same period, mainstream residential placements across all provider types increased by 41%. The resulting increased reliance on residential care continues to create significant financial pressure across all Greater Manchester Local Authority budgets. The latest published outturn figures for local authority revenue expenditure suggest that Greater Manchester collectively spent at least £920m on children’s social care across 2024/25, including £530m purely on children in care, chiefly their homes.

·       In 2025/2026 the Greater Manchester Fostering Hub received 86 enquiries from carers interested in fostering for Bury and this led to 27 initial visits. The 27 initial visits led to 14 applications and assessments commencing and at the end of the year 3 approvals had been made, a further 2 assessments were ongoing. This shows that the Hub received a reasonable number of enquiries (86) and 43% (27) of these enquiries led to a home visit. 52% (14) of home visits to prospective foster carers led to an application and assessment but only 21% (3) led to approvals in year. This is an in-year enquiry to approval rate of 3.4%.

·       The Foster for Greater Manchester Hub is already demonstrating measurable improvement at the front end of the recruitment pathway in all aspects within its scope . Since launch, 99.8% of initial enquiries have been responded to within one working day, more than a quarter of initial enquiries have converted to an initial visit, and conversion from initial visit to application has increased by 10 percentage points, reaching its highest level in three years. The first-year review also found that 51% of initial visits converted to application, compared with 41% in the 12 months prior to May 2024, while initial enquiry to initial visit conversion improved by seven percentage points.

·       The introduction of foster carer ambassadors has strengthened applicant engagement, with application rates 36% higher for households supported by an ambassador. More recent performance data also shows a strengthening pipeline, with households in assessment increasing by 30% compared with the previous year and 11 household approvals recorded in May 2026. However, approvals remain below the DfE baseline, with 106 household approvals against a baseline of 116, and there remains significant variation in application-to-approval conversion across local authorities, ranging from 11.1% to 51.7%. This variation in performance supports the case for moving to an end-to-end model, which would allow Greater Manchester to build on improved early-stage performance, while creating greater consistency, grip and accountability across assessment and approval.

·       Further details on the activity required to deliver against the DfE minimum expectations of a regionalised fostering hub are provided below.

Alternative options considered and rejected

·       The first alternative would be to disband the existing hub and revert to the 10 Greater Manchester LA’s undertaking all fostering recruitment work. The declining number of fostering households and placements over several years and improvement in conversion rates in the initial stages of the process since the inception of the hub, would evidence this is not a workable option. Furthermore, scoping exercises regarding staff currently undertaking recruitment activity within each LA, would suggest that it is, in some LA’s, under resourced and not prioritised in terms of staffing allocation to the task. In addition, this would not be consistent with the Governments expectations.

·       The second alternative is to continue with the Hub as is, undertaking enquiry to application, the hub has evidenced improvement in consistency and conversion rates from enquiry to application. This has not resulted in a significant improvement in approval rates, following the application being handed over to the respective LA for assessment. This option does not therefore provide improved sufficiency capacity, increased placement choice for children or budgetary benefits from reducing dependency on residential care and is therefore not recommended.