Niketa is the founder and CEO of Why Care, a social enterprise focused on increasing the number of stable, loving fostering homes available for vulnerable children. Her experience working as a social worker placing children into fostering homes, as well as assessing people who want to be foster carers started her journey of thinking about how do we find and support the right people into the role of foster carer. Working in national social care policy, she began to understand the national scale of the challenge and became determined to be part of the solution.

Currently there are not enough carers, in the right places, with the right skills for the children who need them. Why Care will help find, assess and support more foster carers from diverse backgrounds. The Shackleton grant will help design an innovative new approach to how we assess people to be foster carers and will bring those who have experience of being in foster care or of being a foster carer into the design and delivery of that assessment. We will also be introducing more ways to support foster carers to ensure those doing this vital role have the right support around them so that they can offer the right support to children placed in their care.

Foster care can be transformative and we believe there should be enough loving foster homes available for all the children who need them.