Fostering Connections

What does this project involve?

Fostering Connections aims to strengthen communication between social workers, improve support for foster carers, and embed trauma-informed practice to reduce emotional and behavioural difficulties among children aged 10–17 in family-based foster care or supported lodgings.  

The programme is delivered over two phases: 

1. Phase 1 is delivered over five months and entails social workers completing an e-learning module followed by seven face-to-face training days, three online reflective practice sessions and given access to an online community of practice.  
2. Phase 2 is developed over the following five to six months and includes: 
   • the establishment of a small group of social workers (trauma-informed champions) in each local authority that act as contact points for support;  
   • an in-person workshop with the local authority’s senior leaders, project leads and trauma-informed champions to examine policies and sustainability for ongoing trauma-informed practice;  
   • online cross-local authority workshop and network events.  

Fostering Connections is delivered by the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and Coram Leap Confronting Conflict (Coram Leap). 

Why did YEF fund this project?

Trauma happens when someone experiences something deeply distressing or harmful that has lasting effects on their wellbeing. Trauma-informed practice means shaping services and support in ways that recognise this impact and aim to avoid causing further harm.   

Acknowledging the impact that trauma can have and continuing to be curious about the causes of children’s behaviour is sensible. Many practitioners within the children, social and youth justice services aim to embed trauma-informed principles into their settings and have reflected these principles in their behaviour policies and practices. These policies and principles may aim to shift practitioners and carers’ perspective of a child’s behaviour from ‘What is wrong with you?’ to ‘What has happened to you?’. Trauma-informed principles can also lead to the targeted support that some children may need. For instance, there is some evidence that trauma-specific therapies, which aim to support children’s recovery from trauma, can reduce children’s involvement in crime and violence. 

However, beyond these general principles, we know very little about how to effectively train practitioners to recognise trauma and amend their practice in ways that change children and young people’s outcomes.  

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) and the Home Office funded a cluster randomised controlled trial of Fostering Connections, with social workers randomised to either receive the Fostering Connections training programme or business as usual. A total of 685 social workers entered the trial (327 intervention, 358 control), working with 699 foster carers and 976 children. The evaluation aimed to establish whether Fostering Connections reduced externalising behavioural difficulties of children in care, as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), completed by the foster carer.  

It also measured the impact on other outcomes related to children (internalising and prosocial behaviour, placement stability and missing from care episodes), foster carers (quality of their working life including compassion satisfaction, burnout, secondary traumatic stress and attitudes to trauma-informed practice) and social workers (attitudes to trauma-informed practice). 

The evaluation also included an Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) to explore implementation, barriers, facilitators and participants’ experiences. This involved a training feedback survey and interviews with 16 senior managers, 25 social workers, 23 foster carers, five trauma-informed champions, and three children. The IPE also included focus groups with three Children in Care Councils (groups of children in care who meet to share their views and to influence how care services are run) and seven focus groups with local authorities’ teams and programme implementers, and 10 observations of training.  

The programme was delivered over eight local authorities (Bradford, Bristol, Dudley, Hackney, Lancashire, Northamptonshire Children’s Trust, Somerset, Telford and Wrekin) between September 2023 and July 2025.

74% of children in the trial were White; 9% mixed or multiple ethnic groups; 7% Black, Black British, Caribbean or African; 5% Asian or Asian British; and 5% from another ethnic group or preferred not to say.  

Key conclusions

Fostering Connections demonstrated no impact on children’s externalising behaviour. Children linked with social workers who received Fostering Connections showed no difference in externalising behaviour compared to children linked to social workers who did not receive the programme. This result has a very low security rating.

Fostering Connection showed mixed results on secondary outcomes related to children, social workers, and foster carers. It had no impact on children’s internalising and prosocial behaviour, a small negative impact on placement stability and moderate negative impact on instances of missing from care episodes. It had no impact/small negative impact on quality of foster carers’ working life including compassion, satisfaction, burnout, secondary traumatic stress and had a positive impact on attitudes to trauma-informed practice. It had a negative impact on social workers’ attitudes to trauma-informed practice.

The trial faced significant challenges that made it difficult to accurately estimate the impact of the programme. The main challenges were low attendance to training and programme activities (41% of social workers did not attend any training sessions); changes in children’s foster carers and social workers and a high level of attrition (43%) throughout the trial which resulted in a small sample size.

Social workers viewed the training as highly acceptable and, at times, transformative, but the length of the training was challenging in a high workload context.

The programme’s perceived impact on foster carers and children’s outcomes was limited.

How secure is this evidence?

These findings have a very low security rating. The trial was a well-designed randomised controlled trial, with randomisation of social workers within each local authority.  

However, the delivery of the trial faced challenges that made it difficult to accurately estimate the impact of the programme.  

51% of the baseline data was missing because of low response rates and quality of data collection. In addition, attrition during the trial was very high: 43% of the children who started the trial were not included in the final analysis. We do not know if the effects found for Fostering Connections would be the same if the children missing from the final analysis were included.

Should you fund or deliver Fostering Connections?

The high level of attrition in the trial severely limits our ability to make a recommendation on whether local authorities should deliver the programme. 

It is important for practitioners and service providers to understand trauma and carefully consider how to respond to the impacts of trauma among young people. However, the limited evidence base more generally for the impact of trauma-informed practice training and support means service providers should think carefully and cautiously about its adoption when the primary aim is violence prevention. The existing evidence base and new findings from this study suggest three important considerations:

1. Attendance to Fostering Connections programme activities was very low. Only 42% of the social workers attended enough training sessions to be considered compliant and 41% of social workers did not attend any training sessions.  
2. Lack of evidence for impact on children and young people’s outcomes. The research on the impact of trauma informed practice training and support on young people’s outcomes remains weak. Specifically relating to Fostering Connections, there was no impact on externalising behaviours within the 12 month follow-up timeframe, with a very low security rating. 
3. Other interventions might be more effective at reducing children and young people’s involvement in violence. These include mentoring, social, and emotional skills training, sports provision, relationship violence reduction sessions, anti-bullying programmes, and therapy. See YEF’s Toolkit for more information.

What will YEF do next?

YEF has no further plans to evaluate or invest in Fostering Connections.

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