Fostering news

Oldham Council has opened the new year by asking residents to consider moving children out of residential homes and into ordinary family life. The Stepping Forward campaign, launched on 5 January 2026, targets the borough's small but steady population of children who live in children's homes and aims to match them with local foster carers.

The appeal is being led from the top. Mayor Eddie Moores and his wife Kath, who began fostering at 25, are telling their own story in the hope it feels less like a job advert and more like a neighbourly invitation. Their message is simple: the memories made in a spare bedroom can last a lifetime.

Behind the scenes, the council is trying to make that invitation easier to accept. Since March 2024 it has run the Mockingbird programme, a support network that groups foster families into "constellations" so carers can share advice, babysitting and emergency help. The scheme, launched at Cockfields Farm, is already operating in other parts of the country and is designed to stop new carers from feeling isolated when a placement gets tough.

A council briefing in May 2023 warned that the cost-of-living crisis was pushing more families past breaking point, leading to a measurable rise in the number of children taken into care. Oldham now hopes that steady local examples, from a mother and her twin daughters who have cared for more than 300 children across 51 years to LGBTQ+ carers Sharon and Bev who marked 11 years in February 2024, will persuade more residents to come forward.

The council will not say how many children currently live in residential care, but it insists the number is small enough that each new foster household makes a visible dent. Anyone approved will join a borough-wide pool of carers who were publicly thanked last October for clocking up 175 combined years of service, a figure that matches Oldham's 175th anniversary and underlines how long locals have been stepping in when families struggle.