Foster care and profit: who looks after England's foster children, who owns the agencies, and what councils pay

The claim, checked

A viral post about the National Fostering Agency, against the filings

A post shared widely on X on 8 October 2026 said that David Cameron privatised the National Fostering Agency in 2015, that it is paid £160 million a year straight to a New Jersey tax haven to look after 2,616 children, and that it makes a tax free profit of £61,000 per child. We checked each part against Companies House filings, the agency's former owners' statements and Ofsted's ownership data. Most of the specifics do not stand up. The questions behind them do: who owns fostering agencies, how much councils pay them, and where the money goes.

Who fosters

40 per cent of fostered children are placed through agencies, up from 27 per cent in 2010

On 31 March 2025 there were 54,820 children in foster placements in England. 32,740 were with their council's own foster carers, including family and friends carers. 17,870 were placed through private agencies and 3,930 through voluntary sector agencies. In 2010, agencies accounted for 12,820 of 47,100. The number of fostered children has been falling since 2022, but the number placed through private agencies has held between about 17,800 and 18,300. Children's homes have moved further: 82.6 per cent of children in children's homes and secure homes on 31 March 2025 were placed with private providers.

Private plus voluntary sector agencies as a share of all foster placements. DfE, children looked after at 31 March; the latest edition of each year.

Foster carers

Councils have lost 14 per cent of their own fostering households since 2021

Ofsted counts 33,435 mainstream fostering households in England on 31 March 2025: 18,415 approved by councils and 15,020 by agencies. Council households have fallen from 21,495 in 2021, while agency households have stayed close to 15,000, so agencies now hold 45 per cent of households and 47.9 per cent of the places that have a child in them. When a council has no suitable carer of its own, it buys a placement from an agency. There were 339 agencies, 84 per cent of them privately owned.

What councils pay

£874 million to private providers: 40.1 per cent of fostering spend, for a third of fostered children

Councils in England spent £2.18 billion on fostering in 2024-25. Of that, £874 million was recorded as private provision of fostering services other than payments to the council's own carers, which is where agency placement fees fall. That is up, in cash terms, from £608 million in 2018-19, the first year the line is split this way, and its share of fostering spend has risen from 35.7 to 40.1 per cent. Private provision may also include fostering companies owned by councils. Some councils record the allowances they pay their own foster carers, who are self employed, as private provision on a separate line (£155 million in 2024-25); that is left out here. Comparing the cost of an agency placement with a council's own is not simple, because agencies often look after children with more complex needs. The CMA compared the total cost of agency placements with councils' own costs and found agency placements about 40 per cent dearer, while noting it was not a precise like for like comparison. Children's homes cost more again: councils recorded £2.74 billion of private residential care, out of £9.0 billion spent on children looked after in all.

DfE Section 251 outturn: private provision on line 3.1.2a (fostering services excluding fees and allowances for the council's own carers) as a share of line 3.1.2 total fostering services.

What the regulator found

Margins of 19.4 per cent, and about £7,913 a year per child above a fair return

The Competition and Markets Authority studied the 15 largest private providers over 2016 to 2020, across Great Britain, who together held slightly over half of fostering placements; its fostering analysis rests on eight of them. The eight named fostering providers did not include the National Fostering Agency. It found the largest agencies charged about £820 a week per placement, flat in cash and falling in real terms, with margins averaging 19.4 per cent, measured before rent, depreciation, amortisation, interest and tax. After allowing for a normal return on capital, their profit was about £7,913 per child a year on an average fee of £42,626. The CMA concluded that prices and profits of the largest providers were materially higher than it would expect in a working market. It also found where the extra cost of an agency placement goes: agencies paid foster carers £4,725 more per child a year than councils, and spent £4,262 more on overheads. For children's homes owned by private equity, profits covered interest only 1.07 times, against 9 times for other providers.

Who owns them

Six owners hold nearly a fifth of all fostering places in England

Ofsted traced every agency to the company at the top of its UK ownership chain. On 31 March 2025 the six largest agency owners held 19 per cent of all approved fostering places, and five of the six are private. The two largest are each more than double the size of the next. Ofsted notes that ownership overseas is not visible in its data. The accounts fill some of that in: National Fostering Group's directors name funds managed by Stirling Square Capital Partners Jersey AIFM Ltd, a Jersey company, as its ultimate controlling parties, with a Luxembourg holding company owning 83.51 per cent; Nutrius, which runs Foster Care Associates, says all its parent companies are incorporated in Jersey and tax registered in the UK. Nutrius made £27.8 million before tax in 2025 on turnover of £266.9 million across fostering, residential care and schools, with a tax charge of £14.8 million.

Approved fostering places in the owner's agencies. Ofsted, Ownership of children's social care providers in England 2025.

The largest agency

National Fostering Group: an 18 per cent margin before interest, and more than half of it spent on interest

National Fostering Group calls itself the UK's largest independent fostering agency, with 32 registered agencies (Ofsted's register shows 23 agencies under the group's ownership). In the year to 31 August 2025 its turnover was £192.9 million. The cost of sales, which the accounts do not break down but which would include foster carers' allowances and fees, was £122.8 million, and overheads £51.6 million. Before depreciation and the amortisation of goodwill from its acquisitions it earned £34.7 million, 18.0 per cent of turnover; after them, an operating profit of £18.5 million, or 9.6 per cent. Interest took £19.3 million, £18.1 million of it on bank borrowings, so it made a small loss before tax. Net debt was £172.3 million. Before 2024 part of the group's borrowing was from its owner. Until December 2023 the group's Luxembourg parent held £41.0 million of loan notes at 14 per cent, on which £93.1 million of interest had been added by August 2023, and £70.6 million of preference shares, also at 14 per cent. Interest on that lending accrued to the owner each year; the accounts do not show how much cash it received when it was repaid. Both were repaid or redeemed in December 2023, after the group sold its education business, the schools and children's homes run under Outcomes First Group, for £360.4 million of cash proceeds. A widely quoted £104 million underlying profit (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) for 2023 is for that whole group, not fostering.

1. 17 Nov 1995The London Fostering Agency Ltd is incorporated as a private limited company. It is renamed The National Fostering Agency Ltd by June 2003.
2. 2006Sovereign Capital, a private equity firm, invests. NFA more than doubles its placements and makes six acquisitions.
3. 19 Jan 2012Graphite Capital replaces Sovereign as principal shareholder in a management buyout. NFA is the second largest independent fostering agency, with 16 offices.
4. Apr 2015Graphite sells its majority stake to a management buyout backed by Stirling Square Capital Partners. NFA supports nearly 2,100 foster families.
5. Dec 2023The group sells its education business, redeems the preference shares and repays the loan notes held by its Luxembourg parent, and refinances with a £160 million bank loan, repayable in 2030.
6. 31 Mar 2025Ofsted records the group as the largest owner of fostering agencies in England: 23 agencies, 4,735 approved places.

What the law now says

England has a power to cap profits it has yet to use; Wales has stopped new profit making agencies

The three nations have taken different routes. Scotland does not permit fostering agencies run for profit. Wales passed a law in March 2025 to remove profit from children's care, and from 1 April 2026 no new children's home, secure accommodation or fostering service can register unless it is a specified kind of not for profit body, and the Welsh Government has committed £75 million over three financial years to help councils and regions develop new residential and fostering provision. England's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 gives the Secretary of State a power to limit the profit of private children's homes and fostering agencies, but only by regulations, and only if satisfied it is necessary having regard to value for money. DfE's 2024 policy paper said it would use the power only if its other market reforms did not work. As at 9 October 2026 we found no regulations made under it.

1. 10 Mar 2022CMA final report: prices and profits of the largest providers are materially higher than expected in a working market.
2. 18 Nov 2024DfE's Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive says the government will cap profits only if its other reforms do not work.
3. 24 Mar 2025The Health and Social Care (Wales) Act 2025 receives Royal Assent.
4. 1 Apr 2026Wales: no new registrations of children's homes, secure accommodation or fostering services except by specified not for profit bodies.
5. 29 Apr 2026England: the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 receives Royal Assent, with powers for financial oversight of providers (section 16) and to limit their profits (section 17).

Council by council

The councils that spend most on private fostering agencies

Private fostering provision in 2024-25, from each council's Section 251 return, shown beside the number of children the council had in foster placements on 31 March 2025. The figures are as councils returned them. Lewisham's is high for its number of fostered children and may include spend that other councils record elsewhere. Councils classify spend differently: Birmingham, whose children's services run through a council owned trust, records its fostering spend as other public provision, and Wandsworth and Middlesbrough are missing because DfE withheld their returns.

£ million, Section 251 outturn 2024-25, line 3.1.2a private provision (fostering services excluding payments to the council's own carers). Line 3.1.2 private provision would rank some councils, such as Manchester, higher because it includes their own carers' allowances. Children: all foster placements, DfE, 31 March 2025.

Questions this raises

Questions and answers