Talking About Racism With a Child You Foster

Most carers who ask us about this are not worried about being racist. They are worried about being clumsy with a child who has already had a hard week. That worry is a good sign, and it is also what most often keeps a carer quiet when a child needs them to speak. Here is what helps, what to do when something has happened, and what a school is obliged to do about it.

Please note: this is general information about the law in England as at 6 November 2026, not legal advice. The school duties below come from the Equality Act 2010 and Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026, with guidance for schools from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. For anything specific to a child in your care, talk to your supervising social worker.

Start before anything has happened

The conversation most carers dread begins with a child coming through the door upset. The way to make it survivable is to have had several duller ones first. Children notice skin colour long before they have words for it, and they fill the gap with their own conclusions. If a child has never once heard you mention race, you are not neutral on the subject. You are an adult they have no particular reason to come to.

This holds whether or not the child is from a minority background. A white child in a house where race never comes up still forms views, just from somewhere other than you. The groundwork is unglamorous:

• Books, films and toys that include children who do not look like the ones already in your house
• Treating similarity and difference as both good, rather than politely declining to notice difference
• Answering a direct question with an answer and a reason, not a change of subject

None of it requires a speech. A sentence while the kettle boils does more than a sit-down talk, because it tells a child the subject is ordinary here. Our guide to fostering a child from a different cultural background covers the practical side.

What to say, roughly by age

Our carers’ training sets this out by age band, and the bands are a guide rather than a script. Our guide to communicating with a child in your care is worth reading alongside it.

• Under five. Talk about similarities and differences as both positive. You will not get a full conversation yet, but you can put inclusive language into ordinary ones.
• Five to ten. Children this age have a fierce sense of fairness, so unfairness is the handle that works. Talk about their heritage and about yours, and be clear neither is better.
• Eleven to fourteen. If something prejudiced comes out of them or their friends, say calmly why it is untrue and why it hurts. Add empathy to fairness: “how would that feel if someone said it about you?” A headline is usually only part of a story, and some of it is written to get a reaction.
• Fifteen to eighteen. Push the thinking instead of supplying the conclusion. “Why do you think that?” gets further than a correction. If they want to protest about something, peaceful is fine and violent is not.

When a child tells you something has happened

Start by believing them. Our own training sheet suggests checking whether the child might have misheard, and we would put that differently now. Questions about the exact words are worth asking, because you will need them later, but ask them the way you would about any other incident, not as a test of whether it really happened. A child who feels audited the first time will not bring you the second.

What helps, in roughly this order:

• Write down what was said, in the child’s words, with the date, where it happened and who else heard it
• Ask how they felt, and say that feeling furious, or oddly flat, is normal
• Say plainly that it was wrong and was not about anything they did
• Tell your supervising social worker, the same day if you can

What does not help is what almost everyone reaches for first. “Try to ignore it” and “it’s over now” are meant kindly, and they land as an instruction to stop talking. Anger arriving sideways a fortnight later is often this, left unsaid. Our guide to behaviour that is hard to handle may be the other half of it. Record what happened, not what you think the child is, and let the record do the arguing.

What the school and the system owe the child

You have more standing here than carers tend to realise. Under section 85 of the Equality Act 2010 a school must not discriminate against or harass a pupil, and race is covered. The public sector equality duty also requires schools to have due regard to eliminating discrimination and fostering good relations. Under section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 the head teacher must determine measures encouraging good behaviour and, in the Act’s words, “in particular, preventing all forms of bullying among pupils”.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026, in force from September 2026, goes further than earlier versions. It names “discriminatory behaviour, including racism, faith-targeted abuse, and other prejudice-based incidents” as child-on-child abuse, and tells staff that racism “may have a significant impact on a child’s welfare, wellbeing and sense of safety”. That makes it a safeguarding matter rather than a playground squabble, and it is worth saying so in those words. Ask the school to record the incident and tell you what they have written down. One incident reads as a bad day. Four on paper read as a pattern, and a pattern is what gets acted on. Our guide to promoting a child’s education names who else at school is already in your corner.

There is a harder version, where the problem is not another child but an adult’s reading of your child. The review into the strip search of Child Q, a Black schoolgirl in Hackney, was published on 14 March 2022 and found racism was likely to have been an influencing factor. It described adultification: Black and global majority children held to adult standards their white peers are not. So if a child in your care is called streetwise in a meeting, or mature for her age, that is a word worth asking about out loud. You are often the only adult in the room who knows what that child is like at seven in the morning.

Where to report it. A child can talk to Childline on 0800 1111, free, at any time of day. If what happened may be an offence, such as an assault or a threat, report it to the police on 101 or online through True Vision, run by the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Call 999 if anyone is in immediate danger. You can report on a child’s behalf, and you do not have to decide first whether it counts as a crime.

Your own habits are most of the lesson

Children copy what you do under mild pressure, not what you say when you are being thoughtful. So the useful work is noticing whether you respond differently to people who are different from you, and correcting it where you find it. That is less comfortable than reading about it. If you are white and caring for a child who is not, it is worth understanding what you have never had to deal with, and saying so honestly rather than defensively when a child raises it.

Being actively anti-racist in a house with children in it is fairly undramatic. You watch things and read things, and you talk about them over dinner. You use the barber or the place of worship the child’s family would have used, often enough that it becomes routine rather than an outing. You get the hair care right, and you ask when you do not know how.

You won’t have to do this alone

We do not expect you to work any of this out by yourself. Every GLF carer has a supervising social worker who knows the child’s history and the local schools, and conversations about identity and racism are a normal part of supervision rather than a sign something has gone wrong. Skills to Foster covers this ground before you are approved. If a school is not taking an incident seriously, your supervising social worker will help you push, and you will not be doing it on your own letterhead.

You do not have to share a child’s background to be the right person for them. The law asks that a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background are given due consideration, and matching takes that seriously, but it is consideration rather than a bar. What a child needs most is an adult who notices and then acts.

As at November 2026 we pay £479.50 a week for a child under 11 and £507.50 a week for a child aged 11 or over, per child while placed, with an enhanced fee of roughly £100 to £200 a week more for higher-needs placements. It is one fixed weekly fee covering allowance and reward. Ofsted inspected us from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated us Outstanding in all three judgements.

Frequently asked questions

Can I foster a child of a different ethnicity to me?

Yes. Matching does take a child’s background into account, because the law requires that a child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background are given due consideration. That is consideration, not a rule limiting you to children who look like you. What matters is whether you will keep a child connected to who they are and act when something happens. Many of our carers are parenting across difference and doing it well.

A child in my care has been racially abused at school. What do I do first?

Write down what was said in the child’s own words, with the date, where it happened and who else heard it. Tell your supervising social worker, ideally the same day. Raise it with the school in writing and ask them to confirm what they have recorded. If it may be an offence, report it to the police on 101 or online through True Vision, and call 999 if anyone is in immediate danger.

What if I say the wrong thing?

You will at some point, and it matters far less than you fear. Children are well used to adults getting things wrong. What they are not used to is an adult saying so and having another go. Going quiet because you fear a misstep does more damage than the misstep, because silence teaches a child this cannot be discussed here. Say you got it wrong, ask what would have been better, and carry on.