Dear Josh MacAlister,

I am writing to you on behalf of Home for Good, a national fostering and adoption charity whose aim is to find a great home for every child who needs one. Our vision is of a care system where children are thriving within homes that are havens and where every child always has a family by their side.

I wanted first to congratulate you on your appointment. With around 80,000 children in the care system in England and many more on the edges of care, this review is a huge opportunity to improve the lives of our nation's most vulnerable children for the better. We were so pleased to hear of the Government's commitment to ensuring this review is broad and radical and are grateful that you are taking up the mantle. We are confident that this review has huge potential to bring about tangible change in the children's social care system to enable children to go on to thrive and flourish.

Undoubtedly, you will be receiving a number of emails at this time, providing you with a range of perspectives on what the review should focus on. While we do have several areas where we believe the review could make significant impact, at this stage we simply want to make two points:

Firstly, we as Home for Good stand willing and ready to support you and your team in any way we can. We recognise the enormity of the task before you and want to reassure you that we are available and willing to help. We are unusual as a charity in that we are not an agency, and we span both adoption and fostering because we recognise that the type of home that best meets the needs of each individual child will be different. We recognise that creating a system that truly cares will involve the participation and collaboration of a wide range of stakeholders, united around the goal of ensuring a safe home for every child. We have been playing our part in inspiring and equipping individuals and families to consider adoption and fostering since we began and have journeyed with more than 1600 people last year alone who are exploring welcoming a vulnerable child into their family. We have a wide pool of expertise and we'd love to share our convening power with you.

Secondly, it is vital that this review of children's social care does not lose sight of the children at the heart of the system. We want to thank you for your commitment to establishing an 'Experts by Experience' group from the outset and ask that you continue this posture of listening throughout the review so that children remain front and centre of your work. It is crucial that you find ways outside of this group to hear from a broad range of individuals of all ages to ensure a breadth of experiences and perspectives are heard in the development of solutions. Ultimately, by holding their best interests at heart and involving them meaningfully throughout, we are confident that this review will be successful in bringing about much-needed change that truly works for children.

We would love to meet with you to hear more about your vision for the review and how we can support you in this work. Please let me know when a suitable date might be to meet.

We look forward to working alongside you to ensure that every child in and around the care system is supported to thrive.

Yours sincerely,

Tania Bright

CEO, Home for Good