Category: Progress Fostering

Progress has earned top marks from Ofsted, proving once again that outstanding care changes lives.

Progress Fostering Service has officially maintained its Outstanding rating by Ofsted following its latest inspection, a recognition that reinforces the agency’s longstanding commitment to delivering exceptional care and support to children and young people. The inspection, conducted from 24 to 28 February 2025, evaluated the fostering agency under the Social Care Common Inspection Framework and praised the organisation for its unwavering focus on positive outcomes, professional excellence, and inclusive care.

In the report, Ofsted inspectors highlighted the outstanding quality of care provided to children and young people placed with Progress foster families. The agency was specifically commended for its ability to deliver highly effective services that consistently exceed expectations, ensuring children not only feel safe but also thrive emotionally, socially, and educationally. Ofsted noted that the children in Progress placements are flourishing, with many experiencing significant progress from their individual starting points. The report detailed how children benefit from tailored, flexible care packages and therapeutic support that address their unique needs.

One of the key features highlighted in the report was Progress’ enhanced care model, which includes direct access to the agency’s therapeutic team and the involvement of family support workers. These professionals play an integral role in supporting both children and carers through one-on-one sessions, youth groups, consultation forums, and holiday schemes. According to the report, this wraparound support not only enriches the children’s lives but also empowers foster carers, creating a strong foundation for stability and growth.

Inspectors were particularly moved by the personal stories shared by children, including one young person who spoke about moving from residential care into a loving foster home where they had the opportunity to choose and care for their first pet. Such moments, the report noted, are symbolic of the confidence, independence, and emotional healing that children experience under Progress’s care.

The leadership of Progress Children’s Services also received glowing praise. The report noted that the agency’s new registered manager, Michelle, appointed in September 2024, had been supported by a strategic succession plan and mentored by the responsible individual. Ofsted commended the leadership team for maintaininga clear vision and ethos, supported by robust internal monitoring and a culture of continuous improvement. Staff at all levels spoke positively about their experience, pointing to comprehensive inductions, training, regular appraisals, and strong support systems that enable them to thrive professionally and deliver the best outcomes for children.

The inspection also confirmed that the leadership team managed transitions with care and collaboration. Foster carers were invited to attend dedicated conferences and provide feedback, and the leadership team responded proactively to concerns raised, ensuring continuity of support and services.

Inspectors also noted Progress’ inclusive recruitment practices and the warm, responsive approach toward prospective foster carers. Social workers were praised for building strong relationships with applicants and their families, including offering dedicated support to birth children within fostering households. Foster carers described feeling well-prepared and supported throughout the assessment and approval process.

The overall outcome of the inspection was overwhelmingly positive.

Speaking after the publication of the report, Michelle Earp, Registered Manager at Progress Fostering Service, expressed pride in the outcome. “This inspection result is a reflection of the incredible team effort at Progress, from our dedicated foster carers and skilled staff to the children whose resilience and growth continue to inspire us every day. We are committed to listening, learning, and doing everything we can to provide exceptional care.”

Tina Bhardwaj, Head of Children’s Service at Progress, added: “We are proud to be recognised once again as an outstanding fostering agency. The feedback from Ofsted validates the deep-rooted values and standards that guide everything we do. While we celebrate this success, we remain focused on the future and on delivering even more meaningful impact for children and families.”

Progress remains one of the leading fostering agencies in the region, known for its innovative approaches, compassionate care, and inclusive ethos. The agency continues to welcome applications from individuals and families interested in making a difference in a child’s life.

On a recent weekday morning, Carla, the therapeutic development officer at the Ofsted-outstanding Progress Fostering Service, posed the question that frames every support session she runs: Who is this child beyond the label?

“Every child is completely individual, regardless of their background and needs,” she regularly tells foster carers when they gather during one of her several sessions with them, at Progress House, elsewhere or online.

That premise, that diagnoses illuminate but do not define, has guided Progress as it navigates a surge of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The number of such referrals has doubled since the pandemic, stretching Britain’s 56,000‑strong fostering network.

To meet the demand, Progress leverages the Solihull Approach, a 12‑week programme that Carla leads several times a year. When carers first hear the length, she said, “they usually think, Twelve weeks? That’s a long time.” But by the final session, the mood shifts. “It’s a celebration of how far they’ve come,” she added, noting the friendships that form around the homework tasks of quiet observation and written reflection.

The core lesson is disarmingly simple: notice your own state before responding to a child. “Breathe, just take a moment first,” Carla tells carers confronting meltdowns in soft‑play centres or frantic school‑run departures. “If you’re hyped up, the child is going to mirror that.”

Foster carers say the advice helps. “It’s like first aid for the brain,” one participant volunteered after the session, comparing the pause to the stop‑and‑assess mantra taught on emergency‑response courses.

Progress is also piloting the Berry assessment, a structured questionnaire that tracks how a child behaves at school versus at home. “It really breaks down and looks at the areas of need,” Carla said. When the answers diverge sharply, she convenes a team‑around‑the‑child meeting to recalibrate support plans.

The method has already revealed masked anxiety in two children and led to tweaks in classroom seating and playground routines. “You can’t fix everything,” Carla cautioned, “but you can reduce the curve balls.”

Teaching the art of rupture and repair

The course spends a full session on what clinicians call rupture and repair—the cycle of conflict and reconciliation common in any family, but especially acute when past trauma shadows the dinner table. Foster carers, Carla said, possess something professional training cannot supply. “They’ve got the biggest hearts, and that’s something you can’t teach.”

She tries, instead, to give them language. One exercise asks carers to juggle an unexpected demand, mimicking the sensory overload a child might feel. “That’s how your child feels,” she tells them afterward.

Progress, which marks its 25th anniversary next month, now supports numerous fostering households. It hosts children’s clubs, support groups and impromptu phone triage, “Can I just have two minutes?” is a common request, to keep placements afloat between formal appointments.

The agency’s culture, Carla said, is summed up in the phrase she repeats to nervous newcomers: “We’re a family, and you’re part of it now.” Her message for the anniversary echoes that refrain. “Keep doing what you’re doing. Everyone is amazing, especially the children,” she said.

Britain must recruit an estimated 8,000 additional foster carers to meet current demand, the Fostering Network says. Many of the hardest‑to‑place children carry complex diagnoses. Progress’ blend of clinical insight and kitchen‑table pragmatism offers one model for how agencies can prepare carers for that reality — and, in the process, remind them to breathe.

At a corner in the Progress Head Office that provides a typical living room setup, Ms. Gill rehearses the ritual that has shaped her days for a quarter‑century with her supportive husband beside her. “Soon as they come in from school, everyone sits,” she says, tapping the surface. “One and a half hours of study time. Every single day.”

The routine explains much about why former foster children still telephone the Gills years later, sometimes from university dormitories. One young man, now studying engineering at the University of Birmingham, recently rang to say her insistence on homework had paid off. “You were right, Musti,” he told her, using the Punjabi word for aunt. 

The Gills are no ordinary foster carers. They joined Progress Fostering Service in June 2000 after being made aware of the rising shortage of culturally sensitive placements in the West Midlands. Six months later she and her husband enrolled on Progress’ very first training course. “When we started, we didn’t know what fostering is,” she recalled. “But we never looked back.”

Since then the couple — known to staff and children simply as “the Gills” have provided homes to more than a dozen young people, some for a night, others for the better part of childhood. They easily described three long‑term stays that alone add up to 30 years of care: a 10‑year placement for a girl who used a wheelchair, and 12 years for two siblings.

Their first assignment, in 2001, all but defined the road ahead: a six‑year‑old boy with profound autism who could neither speak nor sleep. “We had to nail the windows shut,” Mr. Gill said, still incredulous. The ordeal, Ms. Gill added, “built our foundation really solid so we could look after any child.”

Progress now has numerous staff members and works with several fostering families across and beyond the Midlands. But the Gills’ front room remains one of its unofficial situation rooms, a place where social workers drop in unannounced and plates of vegetarian samosas materialise for anyone who looks hungry. “Everybody’s so friendly,” Mr. Gill said. “That’s why we never gave up.”

The commitment has not been cheap. Early on, the couple remortgaged their house to fund vehicle adaptations and ceiling hoists. Nights out disappeared; holidays became logistically fraught. Yet Ms. Gill insists no child in her home should expect less than her own two sons, both graduates of University of Oxford. “If we can do it for our children,” she said, “they’re not different.”

The belief in education runs deep. When a teenager arrived two years ago, flunking classes and nursing a drinking habit, Ms. Gill bought her a corkboard and desk. Within months the girl collected top grades and a place at Leicester University. Another former charge, now 26, sends Christmas cards addressed to “Mum and Dad.”

Such outcomes underscore the theme of Foster Care Fortnight 2025, which began this week and seeks to recruit additional carers nationwide. Britain’s fostering network has contracted by 1 percent each year since 2021, according to the Fostering Network, even as the number of children entering care has risen.

For the Gills, the solution is neither policy detail nor pay scale but people. “Any child can thrive when they know someone believes in them,” she said, just as the couple has been doing since 2001.

Start your fostering journey today. Inquire about fostering at Progress. Visit progresscare.co.uk/fostering or call us on 01902 561066