Foster care recruitment works very differently depending on which country runs it, and the United States could learn something from watching how other systems handle the same basic problem. Every country with a child welfare system faces a shortfall of qualified carers, but some have built a single, coordinated approach to finding and keeping them, while the US relies on a patchwork of state and county programmes that rarely talk to each other.
Why a fragmented system makes recruitment harder
In the US, foster care recruitment is handled separately by each state, and often by county, so requirements can differ sharply between neighbouring areas. That inconsistency makes a single national message hard to run. Even inside more coordinated systems, sector leaders still push for tighter centralisation. In the UK, directors of children’s services have called for a single national recruitment campaign rather than leaving each council to run its own.
The UK’s approach as a working example
Fostering across Scotland, England and Wales runs through a defined set of regional and national agencies with a common application process, rather than thousands of disconnected local offices. A prospective carer can become a foster carer through one pathway from enquiry to approval, with a single organisation handling the whole process. Even with that structure in place, the country still reports carer numbers falling short of what’s needed, which suggests coordination helps without being a complete fix.
How a few other countries approach it
A handful of countries have tackled recruitment with a similar degree of coordination.
Australia: Each state runs its own child protection system, much like the US, but several run centralised campaigns that address common myths about who can foster, including age and housing type.
Canada: Provinces keep control over child welfare, yet many share a national framework for training and approval, so a carer’s qualification transfers more easily between provinces than it does between US states.
New Zealand: A single national agency handles fostering, giving the country one point of contact and one consistent set of expectations for anyone considering it.
Recruiting is only half the job
Recruiting new carers solves only part of the problem if experienced carers leave at a similar rate, and in England, more fostering households leaving than joining has been the pattern for several years, even as demand keeps rising. Carers who feel well supported tend to stay for years rather than months. A campaign not followed by consistent support risks becoming a revolving door rather than a real increase in numbers.
What the US could reasonably take from this
None of this requires copying another country’s system wholesale, since state-level child welfare in the US isn’t likely to disappear, but a few lessons travel well regardless of structure. A single point of contact for enquiries, a consistent message about who can foster, and ongoing support once someone is approved show up repeatedly in countries that recruit more successfully than average, and any one of those is a reasonable place for individual states to start.
