When a Foster Child Tells You Something

Of all the worries people bring to a first phone call about fostering, this is the one they tend not to say out loud. What if a child tells me something terrible and I say the wrong thing? It is a fair worry, and the answer is gentler than you would expect: there is no clever script, and nobody is marking your reaction. Here is what actually helps, and what happens next.

Please note: this is general information for people thinking about fostering. It is not legal or safeguarding advice about any individual child, and your agency’s own safeguarding procedure always comes first. Correct at October 2026. The NSPCC’s guidance for adults is at nspcc.org.uk.

Most children in care have already been through something

The Department for Education counted 81,770 children in care in England on 31 March 2025. Of the 75,240 who had not arrived in this country alone, 73 per cent were in care because of abuse or neglect. A child who moves in with you has, more often than not, already been hurt by an adult, and usually by an adult they loved. None of which makes your house a crisis waiting to happen. It makes being easy to talk to part of the job rather than a bonus.

Children almost never tell you in one sitting

The research is worth knowing before you need it. The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse reported in July 2026 that around one in six children are sexually abused during childhood, at least 20 per cent of girls and 10 per cent of boys. Fewer than one in ten adults who were abused as children had told anyone in an official position at the time. One in five had never told anyone at all until a researcher asked. When children do tell, they tell friends and family long before they tell professionals, and for younger children it is most often their mum.

Three things stop them. Threats and manipulation by whoever is doing it. Fear of what telling will set in motion. And very often not recognising it as abuse at all, because it is normal life and has been for years.

So it rarely arrives as a sit-down conversation. It comes out in the car, at the kitchen sink, on the bottom stair at half past nine at night. Usually in pieces, over months, in the wrong order.

What to do while a child is talking

Almost all of it is listening, and the hard part is doing nothing else:

• stop what you are doing, properly: put the phone face down, leave the washing up, do not glance at the clock
• get yourself down to their level rather than standing over them
• let the silences run; if they stop halfway through, wait rather than filling it
• keep to open prompts only, along the lines of “tell me more” or “what happened next”
• say back what you heard, in their words, so you both know you have it right
• tell them they were right to tell you, and that none of it is their fault
• do not ask them to go through it again for your benefit

The NSPCC puts one warning above the others: if you look shocked, or as though you do not believe them, a child may stop talking or take back what they just said. That is a lot to ask, given what you are hearing. Aim for calm rather than blank. A child watching your face for disgust will settle for ordinary.

The one promise you cannot make

Never agree to keep it secret, however it is asked for. Say instead something close to: “If what you are telling me means you are not safe, I will have to tell someone whose job it is to help. I will tell you who, and I will tell you when.” Then do exactly that.

This is where a lot of advice online goes wrong. Do not tell a child that the people you have to tell are the good guys. You have no idea how the next few weeks will feel from where they are sitting, and a child who finds the process slow or frightening will remember that you promised otherwise. Describe what will happen rather than how they should feel about it.

What not to do, and why

You are not an investigator and you should not try to be one. Resist the pull to establish who, when and how many times, even though your instinct will be to get the full picture before you pick up the phone. Questioning a child can shape what they remember and can damage a police case later. Do not approach the person they have named: the NSPCC is blunt that confronting an alleged abuser makes things worse for the child, and it can also put you in an unsafe position in your own home. Do not tidy the account up into something more plausible. And do not wait a few days to see whether it happens again.

Writing it down, and who you tell

Tell your supervising social worker as soon as the conversation ends, the same day, and use the out of hours number if it is the evening. Then write it down while it is fresh:

• the date, the time, and where you were
• what the child said, in their own words, in quotation marks wherever you can manage it
• what you saw: their face, what they were doing, what set it off if you know
• facts only, with your opinions and theories left out

Do not correct a child’s grammar or swap their words for politer ones. The exact phrasing is often the most useful thing in the record.

After that it stops being yours to carry. Under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 the local authority has to make enquiries where it has reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm, and those enquiries exist to help it decide whether to act to safeguard the child’s welfare. Notice what that is not. Nobody is weighing up whether the child passed a credibility test, and that is not your job either. If you report something and nothing appears to happen, say it again and put it in writing. The NSPCC Helpline will talk it through with you on 0808 800 5000, or by email to help@nspcc.org.uk, anonymously if you prefer. If a child is in immediate danger, that is 999, and you tell your social worker afterwards.

Do not push, but do ask again

These two instructions sound contradictory and are not. Pushing inside a conversation shuts children down. Asking again, weeks later, does the opposite: survivors told researchers that being asked a second or a third time was what made them feel their experience mattered enough to mention. So leave the door open on purpose. “You seemed quiet after Thursday. Anything you want to tell me?” Then let it go and ask again another time.

Some children cannot get it out loud at all. Childline has a letter builder that helps a child write down what they cannot say, and Childline itself is on 0800 1111 for any child. Our piece on communicating with a child in care covers the sideways conversations that work better than sitting down face to face.

Hearing it is hard on you too

Nobody warns you about the evening afterwards, when the house is quiet and you are holding something you cannot unhear. Ring your supervising social worker that night rather than the following week, bring it to supervision, and keep the detail out of conversations with friends and your own family. Our articles on trauma and attachment and on behaviour that is hard to handle both make the weeks afterwards less bewildering.

This is the part most carers only work out later. A child telling you something is not a sign your home is going wrong. It is almost always a sign it is going right, because they have decided you are safe enough to be told.

You won’t have to do this alone

None of this is something you walk in knowing. Skills to Foster covers it before you go anywhere near a fostering panel, and it comes round again in training afterwards. You will have a supervising social worker who knows the child, a number that is answered out of hours, and nobody at GLF expects you to decide anything on your own at ten at night. Ofsted inspected us from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated us Outstanding in all three judgements. Our pay is one fixed weekly fee of 479.50 pounds for a child under 11 and 507.50 pounds for a child aged 11 or over, with an enhanced fee of roughly 100 to 200 pounds a week more where a child’s needs are higher. You can read more about the support our carers get.

Frequently asked questions

What if I say the wrong thing?

One clumsy sentence will not undo a child’s trust in you. The things that genuinely cause harm are a short list: promising to keep it secret, questioning the child to get the full story, and going to the person they named. Avoid those, listen, write it down, and ring your supervising social worker. That is the whole of it.

Do I have to tell the social worker even if the child begs me not to?

Yes. It is not a decision you get to make, and you should say so to the child before you are ever in that position, so it does not land as a betrayal. Tell them who you are telling and when, then follow through.

What if it happened years ago, before they came into care?

Report it exactly the same way. You cannot know what is already on record, whether the person is still around children, or whether anyone was ever told. Something said about the distant past is still new information today.

What if a child says something about someone in my own household?

Tell your supervising social worker and the agency straight away. A different procedure applies when the person named is an adult who looks after children, and your local authority has a role in it. Do not try to resolve it inside the house, and do not raise it with the person concerned. It feels unnatural, and it is right.