What Do Foster Carers Have to Write Down?

Nobody enquires about fostering because they fancy the paperwork. But recording is part of the job, and it is a lot less daunting than people fear. Here is what you actually write, how often, and who reads it.

Please note: this is general information about record keeping in fostering, not legal or data protection advice about your own situation. It refers to the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, and to regulation 50 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. Correct at August 2026. Your own agency’s recording policy always comes first, and the Information Commissioner’s guidance on access to records is at ico.org.uk.

Most people who ring us about fostering ask about the spare room, the money, or whether they are too old. Almost nobody asks about the writing. Then they get approved, a child arrives on a Tuesday, and by Thursday they are sitting with a notebook wondering what on earth they are supposed to put in it.

So here is the honest answer to a question people are too embarrassed to ask.

Do foster carers have to keep records?

Yes. Every day, or as close to daily as you can manage.

You keep a record of the child in your care. What happened, and what the child said about it. It is not a diary of your feelings and it is not a school essay. Most entries are three or four lines.

Your agency will tell you the format. Some carers use a paper log, some type it up, most use an online portal. At Fostering Hearts your supervising social worker sets this up with you before a child ever arrives, and they read what you write.

What actually goes in it?

Think of it as the things a stranger would need to know to understand the child’s week.

Health and appointments:

• The dentist, the optician, immunisations, any illness, any accident or injury
• Medication you have given, including the time and the dose (your agency may also want this on a separate medication form)
• Appointments with a mental health worker
• Patterns you notice, such as a rash that comes back every time she eats something with dairy in it

School and growing up:

• Attendance, parents’ evenings, anything a teacher says that matters
• First steps, a swimming badge, a part in the play, a good report
• Bullying, or a suspension

Who came and went:

• Visits from social workers
• Family time with birth relatives, and how the child was beforehand and afterwards
• Nights away, sleepovers, school trips, babysitters

Things that worry you:

• Any incident or comment that sits badly with you
• If a child goes missing, or the police become involved
• Anything to do with safer caring
• Any disclosure or allegation the child makes
• Theft or damage

That last group matters most. Write those up the same day, even if the day has been long.

How do I write it well?

This is the part nobody explains properly, so here it is.

Stick to facts. Say what you saw and heard, not what you concluded. Keep the child’s own words in quotation marks. Use their first name or initials rather than their full name, so that if the record is ever lost or left on a train, it does not identify them. Keep the language plain. Leave out birth parents and other third parties except where they were part of the event you are recording.

Two versions of the same evening.

One: “Ellie was really difficult after contact, obviously upset about her mum, took it out on me as usual.”

Two: “Family time 4pm to 5.30pm at the centre. In the car on the way home E said ‘I don’t want to go next week’. At 7pm she pushed her plate away and went upstairs. Came back down at 8.15 and asked to watch telly with us.”

The second one is shorter, kinder, and worth ten times as much. In a year, when someone is trying to work out whether family time is helping or hurting, the second entry is evidence. The first is just a mood.

Length is not the point. Accuracy is.

Who reads what I write?

More people than you would think, and the list is the reason to take it seriously.

Your supervising social worker and the child’s social worker read it to spot what the child needs. It can go before a family court as evidence, either for a child going home or for staying in care. If anyone ever makes an allegation about you, your records are the contemporaneous account of what really happened, which is one of the few real protections a carer has.

And then there is the reader nobody pictures. The child.

Children in care can ask to see their own records, and many do, years later, as adults trying to piece together where they were and who cared about them. In December 2025 the Information Commissioner published research on how that goes. Of the people who asked for their care records, 71 per cent had struggled with poor communication, 69 per cent found it took longer than they expected, some waiting years, and 87 per cent were left with questions nobody answered. John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, said those requests are “too often met with cold bureaucracy, long delays and pages of unexplained redactions”.

His office’s answer is a campaign called Better Records Together, and one of the things it asks of everyone who writes about a child is to record with that future reader in mind.

Which brings it back to your notebook on a Thursday evening. Write it so that a twenty-eight-year-old could read it and recognise themselves in it. Note the good days as carefully as the hard ones, because a file full of incidents and nothing else tells a child a lie about their own childhood. That is the same reason we take life story work seriously.

How long are the records kept?

Longer than most people expect.

When a child leaves your care, your records go back to the fostering service if they do not already have them. The local authority has to keep a looked-after child’s case record until the child’s seventy-fifth birthday, or for fifteen years if the child dies before turning eighteen. That comes from regulation 50 of the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010.

Your own copies are different. Once you have written confirmation that the service holds a copy and you have the go-ahead, you destroy yours. Shred the paper, delete the files. Do not keep a shoebox of old logs in the loft, however fond you were of the child.

I’m really not a paperwork person

Nor are plenty of very good foster carers.

Nobody at panel is looking for a novelist. Nobody at Fostering Hearts is going to mark your spelling. If handwriting is a struggle, you can type it. If typing is a struggle, dictate it into your phone in the school car park and tidy it up later. If you are dyslexic, say so early and we will find a way round it. It is the sort of thing people worry will count against them, and it does not.

What we will do is show you how. Recording is covered before you are approved, in your Skills to Foster preparation, and then again with your supervising social worker in supervision, using your own real entries rather than a made-up example.

You will not be doing this on your own

Our supervising social workers hold around six families each. That is deliberate. It means yours has time to sit with you and go through what you have written, rather than skim it once a year.

One carer told Ofsted at our November 2024 inspection: “My supervising social worker has been an absolute lifeline for me. I feel so much more confident in my role because of her.” Ofsted rated Fostering Hearts good overall, with outstanding leadership and management.

Children with us also carry a pocket-sized card with the numbers they need if they want to raise a worry with someone outside the house. Their voice is not only in your log. It has its own route.

Recording is a skill, and like every other part of this, you learn it by doing it with someone beside you.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to write something every single day?

Aim for daily, and date every entry. Weekly is acceptable if daily is genuinely not possible, and the minimum frequency for your household is agreed at the child’s review. Anything serious, an injury or a disclosure, gets written up the same day.

Can the child read what I have written about them?

They can ask to, and Standard 26 of the fostering National Minimum Standards says children should be actively encouraged to read their files and to correct errors or add their own statement. Check with your supervising social worker before handing anything over yourself, because there may be third party information in it. Write everything as though they will read it, because one day they might.

What if I have written something that turns out to be wrong?

Correct it, and show your working. Keep the original wording, and make clear what you have changed and when. Never change a record because somebody asked you to.

Is it a lot of work?

It is about ten minutes a day once you have the habit. It is the single most useful ten minutes you will spend, and the part carers are gladdest of when something goes wrong.

Do I need my own computer to foster?

No. Paper is fine if that is what works for you, as long as it is stored somewhere locked and private.