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Foster Care Uncovered

Foster Care Uncovered

By: Sarah Anderson & Louise Allen
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About this listen

The Truth from the Frontline.

No filter, no spin, no hiding. The stories behind the headlines, the truths behind the system - exposing, confronting, and moving foster care forward.

Hosted by Sarah Anderson, CEO of FosterWiki & Co-founder of the NFCQ and Louise Allen, Bestselling Author & Founder of Spark Sisterhood.

All views shared in this podcast reflect the personal opinions of the hosts alone. They are not intended as factual assertions about any person or organisation, nor do they represent the views of any employer or professional body.

FosterWiki 2025
Parenting & Families Relationships Social Sciences
Episodes
  • When Policy Meets the Street: A Social Worker Lifts the Lid
    Dec 10 2025

    In this episode, Sarah and Louise sit down with social worker Nana Abbey-Hagen, a practitioner who moves fluently between frontline reality, leadership conversations, and the community spaces where social work and lived experience intersect.

    Nana talks candidly about working conditions for social workers and whether those pressures ripple into foster care. We explore his work with the Chief Social Worker, Isabelle Trowler, and dig into the long-standing cultural gap between leadership and frontline practice, a gap foster carers know all too well.

    He talks about his Street Social Work Practice Model: why he created it, the blind spots it exposes, and how it reconnects practice with the real lives of children, families, and carers.

    We wrap with his vision for the future of social work and what that future means for foster carers on the ground.

    A grounded, honest conversation that pushes past the corporate narrative and into the truth of what’s really happening.

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    47 mins
  • The Form F, one of fostering’s most entrenched processes and why it desperately needs a rethink.
    Dec 3 2025

    In this episode, Sarah and Louise roll right back to the start and take a deep dive into the Form F assessment, what it was meant to be, why it’s drifting so far from purpose, and how it’s shaping (and in too many cases misshaping) foster care, culture, and recruitment today.

    There’s a lot of serious ground to cover…and, as always with Sarah and Louise, just enough humour to keep the edges from getting too sharp.

    They tackle the theatre of panel, why it’s time for that curtain to finally fall, what the Form F bizarrely has in common with a Hoover, and, yes, the ongoing mystery of Sarah’s long-lost Year Nine boyfriend Gary, who remains missing in action despite their best investigative efforts.

    Tune in for an honest, insightful, slightly mischievous exploration of one of fostering’s most entrenched processes, and why it desperately needs a rethink.

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    1 hr and 19 mins
  • Indefensible unforgivable
    Nov 26 2025

    Indefensible unforgivable.

    Sarah & Louise take apart today’s Government fostering stats - exposing the spin behind the headlines and the failings despite millions of taxpayer investment.

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    51 mins
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