The Index measures how findable every council fostering service in England is on Google and in AI assistants, and whether local families are sent to the council or to a private agency. 147 services, refreshed every month, method published. Nobody can pay to move it.
Initial fostering enquiries in England in 2024 to 2025. Every one of them started with somebody looking.
Ofsted, Fostering in England 2024 to 2025. Checked 2 September 2026.
Of mainstream fostering households are with private agencies, at an average of £820 a week per child to the council.
Ofsted, Fostering in England 2024 to 2025. Competition and Markets Authority, 2022. Checked 2 September 2026.
Scored services publish no structured data at all, the code that tells Google and AI assistants who they are.
The Index, 1 September 2026 board.
The score tells a council what to fix. The share tells it whether the fix was enough. A score can be finished. A share never is, because it moves every time an agency acts.
How easy a service is to find on Google and in AI assistants. It measures the council’s own website and listings, so it sits within the council’s control. Fix things and it rises.
Pool average by dimension, 1 September 2026. Councils win where families search and lose where machines read.
Of everything a local family sees when they search Google or ask an AI assistant about fostering near them, the share that belongs to the council and its hub rather than to private agencies. This is the headline number. It can fall while the score rises, if an agency spends more.
One area, one month, illustrative. Read left to right as the results a family is shown.
We publish the share only where we can classify enough of the local results, and we say where we can’t. Never a zero for a service we could not measure.
The scoreboard is independent of who pays. Clients buy improvement in their real visibility, and the ranking follows. They can’t buy the rank.
The searches and the questions prospective carers actually use, in every area, on Google and in AI assistants. Nothing is asked twice in a month.
Every service in the pool on the same day, so ranks and neighbours stay comparable. A published month is never rewritten.
The weights, the version, the sources and our own corrections are on the methodology page for anyone to check.
A service whose website blocks us is recorded as a data gap with the reason. Never a fake zero, never a half-measured score that looks healthy.
2 measurements on the same day can differ by up to 2.6 points, so we never sell a single month’s rank. We sell the trend and the share. Our own re-measurement, 7 August 2026. Checked 2 September 2026.
Councils lose enquiries to private agencies because families can’t find them online. We fix that, as much or as little as you want.
We promise more enquiries, and a bigger share of local enquiries coming to you instead of to agencies. You’ll see it in your own data. We don’t promise more approved carers. That depends on your assessment capacity and your offer, and on how long each step takes. We say so before we’re asked.
A council taking 1,000 enquiries a year that lifts them by 5 percent gains around 50 enquiries, about 1 household, 1 to 2 children, and roughly £20,000 to £58,000 a year of agency fees it no longer pays. We never promise the household. We promise the enquiries and the share, and the arithmetic does the rest.
Ofsted, Fostering in England 2024 to 2025 (149,795 enquiries; 3,050 newly approved mainstream households). Devon County Council freedom of information response, 2022 to 2023; Competition and Markets Authority, 2022. Checked 2 September 2026.
Search by name, filter by hub, and see the 4 dimensions behind every score. Data gaps are shown after the ranked rows with the reason.
| Rank | Service | Type | Hub | Findability Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Salford City Council | Authority | Foster for Greater Manchester | 75.4 |
| 2 | Devon | Authority | Fostering South West | 75.3 |
| 3 | Ealing | Authority | Foster with West London | 73.9 |
| 4 | Bristol | Authority | Fostering South West | 73 |
| 5 | Buckinghamshire Council | Authority | 72.3 | |
| 131 scored, 16 data gaps, 1 September 2026See the full board | ||||
A free conversation about your score, your share and the 3 things we would fix first. We have spent years working alongside councils, and we built the Index to help them attract more foster carers directly.