The Birth Children’s Views on Their Family’s Fostering is a free, printable feedback form designed to help birth children share their honest feelings, experiences, and perspectives about living in a fostering household. Created with sensitivity and clarity, this child-friendly tool supports social workers, fostering teams, and support professionals in ensuring the voices of birth children are heard, respected, and considered in family assessments and ongoing foster care planning.
Fostering can have a big impact on the children already living in the home. This worksheet helps them reflect on their emotions, relationships, and any changes in family life that come with fostering. It empowers them to speak openly about what’s going well, what’s challenging, and what might help them feel more supported.
The form includes:
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Simple yes/sometimes/no statements about time with parents, sharing space, feeling included, and getting along with foster children
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Mood scales to indicate overall feelings about fostering (e.g. happy, sad, mixed)
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Open-ended questions about the best and hardest parts of fostering life
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Tick-box reflections on what they like or struggle with when foster children stay
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Prompts for suggestions on what would make fostering better for them
This resource is particularly useful for:
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Foster care reviews and supervision
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Direct work sessions with birth children
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Supportive family conversations
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Promoting participation and emotional wellbeing in foster families
It allows professionals and carers to better understand how fostering is affecting birth children—something that can often be overlooked—and encourages more open communication within the home. Whether they feel proud, overwhelmed, happy, or conflicted, children are given a safe space to express themselves and be part of the conversation.
This is valuable, easy-to-use tool for helping birth children explore and share their experiences in fostering households and wishes and feelings. Perfect for child-led reviews, support planning, and building understanding in foster families.
