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Introducing our foster care leave policy
20 November 2025
Read time: 8 minutes
We’re delighted to announce the launch of our new foster care leave policy — a meaningful step forward in supporting our people and their families. We’re equally proud to share that we’ve been officially recognised as a Fostering Friendly Employer by The Fostering Network, the UK’s leading fostering charity.
Fostering can be both incredibly rewarding and deeply demanding. That’s why we’re committed to making it easier for our colleagues to step up when it matters most — by providing the time, flexibility, and support they need to make a difference in a child’s life.
We’re thrilled to welcome Intact Insurance as a Fostering Friendly Employer. By offering paid leave and recognising the unique challenges foster carers face, Intact Insurance is helping to create a more supportive and inclusive workplace for those making a life-changing difference to children and young people.
The Fostering Network
For eligible employees who are either applying to become a foster carer or are already approved, the policy provides up to five days of paid foster care leave per calendar year. These days can be used for training and assessments, approval panels and review meetings, as well as any other fostering-related responsibilities.
Our new policy is the result of passionate advocacy from our Families Employee Resource Group (ERG). It's a powerful example of how our colleague's voices can shape meaningful change in our workplace.
Kate, a long-standing colleague and member of our Families ERG, unexpectedly found herself on a journey to becoming a kinship foster carer. In her own words, she shares her story...
Hi, I’m Kate and I’ve worked at Intact Insurance for more than 26 years. I wear many hats – wife, mum, magistrate, volunteer and kinship foster carer, a term you may not be familiar with.
Kinship care involves looking after a child you already have a connection with (shout-out to the grandparents, siblings, aunts/uncles and close family friends who step up when needed); whereas foster care typically involves caring for a child you don’t have a prior relationship with, under the guidance of the local authority.
My life has taken many twists and turns, but fostering is by far the most unexpected.
In 2013 the local authority called to ask if we could care for our nephew ‘for a few days’. His home situation had become unsafe, and he needed some respite whilst the adults around him figured out a plan. Our nephew lived a fair way from us which complicated matters, but, of course, we said yes.
The next three months were a whirlwind of appointments and interviews to assess us as carers. We were asked about our childhoods, employment, finances, emotional wellbeing, the impact on our daughter, and how our friends and family felt about it.
As it turned out, our nephew was placed with a foster family closer to where he lived, and we supported from a distance, visiting and attending reviews when we could.
Fast forward to 2016, another unexpected call: our nephew's foster placement had broken down, so we stepped up again. More interviews, another panel of 15 professionals firing questions at us. Finally, on 31 August 2017, our three became four.
Looking back, we had no idea what life as foster carers would be like. Meetings, reviews, endless forms, social worker visits, care planning, health checks and ongoing CPD have become the norm – all whilst juggling full time work, parenting, and contact with the local authority and our nephew's birth parents.
It hasn’t been easy: fostering has tested my patience, grit, compassion and pragmatism in ways I never anticipated. There have been incredible highs and painful lows. As a family, we’ve accommodated intrusion most people never experience. In return, we have watched our nephew thrive. He is now a compassionate, clever young man with university offers, and the best cousin/brother our daughter could have hoped for. Would we do it again? In a heartbeat. Yes, it’s complicated, but so worthwhile.
I wouldn’t have survived the ups and downs without the support of two brilliant leaders, both of whom gave me the space to deal with ‘problem of the day’ and leant an understanding ear when things got a little hectic. The autonomy to manage my diary enabled me to meet the challenges and demands of fostering without the extra stress of work complications.
In return, the business has gained someone who excels in crisis management, diplomacy, advocacy, resilience, and emotional strength, and practical skills like mental health awareness, and communication.
Fostering isn’t a position I sought out, but it’s a role I fulfil with pride. Now that or nephew is 18, we’ve started a ‘staying put’ arrangement to support him through university.
Many kinship carers step up in a crisis, often without any ringfenced help. According to The Fostering Network, a quarter of kinship carers give up their jobs to meet the needs of the children they care for, and often dip in to savings or pensions to make it work.
If you are already a kinship carer, or considering fostering, check out our new policy, and talk to your leader – you might be surprised by what is possible.
I joined the Families ERG, a brilliant team of colleagues passionate about supporting adoptive, kinship and foster families, and this policy is the culmination of that work. It’s a brilliant legacy I’m incredibly proud of.
As an employer, we are constantly thriving to make change happen and hear the voices of our people, their experiences and their passions. We know that when we give our colleagues a platform to share (such as through our ERGs), that's where we see real change taking shape. To date, our ERGs have helped to implement and curate the following policies:
Interested in a career with us where you can help to drive change? Check out our latest vacancies.