Latest news with #NowTeach
Forbes
13 hours ago
- General
- Forbes
Now Foster: Saving Kids, One Weekend A Month
When Now Teach launched in 2017, co-founded by Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway and educator Katie Waldegrave, it offered a powerful new narrative: that professionals in midlife had more to give than planning retirement. And that society had more to gain—if only we created more welcoming off-ramps. It was a radical reframe of the so-called 'third quarter' of life, tapping into the talents of people ready for meaningful new careers later in life. Thousands responded. Now, Waldegrave is extending the same midlife transformation logic to one of society's most underserved spaces: foster care. Together with former social worker Laurie Kilby, she's launched Now Foster, a not-for-profit with an equally ambitious goal—to broaden who fosters kids - and how. Katie Waldegrave Now Foster The UK's foster care system is in crisis. There are not enough carers. Outcomes for what's referred to as 'children in care' remain unacceptably awful. Many are placed in residential settings as young as seven, cut off from consistent relationships, and abruptly exited from care at 18 with no support structures. It's a system over-stressed, underfunded, and ill-equipped to serve the 80,000 children currently in its remit. Katie Waldegrave, who began her career in teaching with Teach First, knew the limits of what even the best schools could do. As she dug deeper into the care system after a nudge from journalist and foster carer Martin Barrow, she was struck by the parallels with education—and the potential for change. 'Someone needs to do for fostering what you did for teaching,' he told her. So she did. Enter Now Foster's flagship programme: the Weekenders. This isn't traditional fostering. It's not 24/7 care. Instead, it's a model where trained adults open their homes to the same child one weekend a month, providing continuity, affection and new horizons. Think aunt, uncle, or honorary grandparent—not substitute parent. It's simple. It's smart. And it's working. Laurie Kilby Now Foster Laurie Kilby, who spent years on the frontlines as a social worker, calls it 'the best thing I do.' Her own weekend guest—a 14-year-old boy—calls it 'all the fun, no school run.' It offers children new experiences, and carers a meaningful connection with flexibility. Full-time carers get welcome support. Children gain a second safe adult. And the system gains a new layer of humanity. The Weekender profile echoes that of the Now Teach recruits: midlife professionals with empathy, energy and life experience. Many are still working. Some are not. Some have children, or grandchildren. Others have neither. What they share is a sense of purpose—and the time to offer it. This new format opens the door to people who might never have considered fostering. It removes the 'all or nothing' barrier and makes the first step easier. With a single weekend commitment, many more can say yes. And many more must. Too often, children leave care at 18, defined as 'adult,' with no enduring adult relationships. They are more likely to experience unemployment, homelessness, incarceration—and even shortened life expectancy. At its worst, residential care can cost £250,000 a year and deliver none of the outcomes that justify the cost. Weekenders are a low-cost, high-impact complement to full-time fostering—and potentially a powerful antidote to intergenerational disconnection. Fostering remains poorly understood. It's often confused with adoption or framed in the media through stories of crisis and failure. Few know that fostering can take many forms—from emergency stays to longer-term arrangements—and fewer still would ever consider themselves eligible. Kilby wants to change that. The mission is not just to increase recruitment, but to reframe foster care entirely. Less emergency stop-gap. More intentional relationship. Less bureaucracy. More community. NOW Foster also wants to shift the language. 'Respite care,' a term used when carers reach burnout, can stigmatise children—making them feel they are the cause of the crisis. Weekenders flip the framing. It's not about a break from children. It's about building a team around them. Now Foster is currently active in 10 London boroughs and aims to scale nationally. The long-term ambition: make weekending a recognised and resourced form of foster care in its own right. The goal is a systemic shift. That every child in care, where appropriate, has access to at least two safe, supportive adults. That we normalise intergenerational care. That fostering moves from the shadows to the centre of civic life. And that midlife becomes a powerful source of both individual and societal regeneration—not withdrawal. The parallels to Now Teach are clear. Both initiatives identify untapped potential in people at midlife. Both create smart, flexible structures for impact. Both ask: what if you could matter more in your second half? The difference? Now Foster tackles a crisis that's hidden in plain sight. Foster care is too often an afterthought in policy, philanthropy and media. And yet the costs of inaction—financial, human, and generational—are enormous. But perhaps most compelling of all is what Katie Waldegrave and Laurie Kilby hear from the children themselves. Young people matched with weekenders are beginning to thrive. One, previously restless and unsettled, discovered a love for musical theatre through a weekender's support. She's now applying to university to study it. Others are reconnecting with siblings, building confidence, and finding a thread of stability previously unknown. As Laurie Kilby puts it: 'It only takes one adult to change a child's life. And it doesn't have to be the full-time carer.'
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Getting more men into teaching and early years childcare
The strong male role models that the education secretary seeks to combat 'toxic' behaviours in schools could be within reach (We need more male teachers so British boys have role models, says minister, 3 April). Older recruits, ie career changers, are an outlier when it comes to the low number of male teachers in classrooms across England. At Now Teach, a charity helping people retrain as teachers, 51% of our network is men, compared with 35% nationally. Over half our hires last September were men; nationally women made up 68% of new trainees. This gender imbalance is set to worsen – just 30% of current new starters are men, while Now Teach is at 50%. We have seen this pattern for several years. At an average age of 47, these converts bring decades of professional and lived experience. Men want to be teachers, but just two in five male applicants makes it on to a training course compared with nearly two-thirds of female applicants. Now Teach's conversion rates are near parity. We believe that this shows the need for a dedicated support service to help men make a sustainable career change to the sector. We could hire nearly 1,000 male teachers by the end of this parliament if our state funding was restored. The Tory government cut our funding, but Labour has committed £450m to recruit 6,500 teachers. We back a recruitment campaign and stand ready to scale our efforts to close the classroom gender KellawayCo-founder, Now Teach Bridget Phillipson is right that it's important for boys to see men teaching, guiding and leading in classrooms. But she's missed something crucial: childcare. Young children lack male role models. While just one in four teachers in schools are men, that number plummets in early years. We desperately need to see men supporting children during those crucial years from birth to five. Stereotypes and misconceptions about childcare careers have kept men largely absent from this sector. Any efforts to recruit more of them into education must therefore give equal focus to early years. Addressing this could unlock a previously untapped workforce and provide more positive role models for children at the most critical stage of their WigdortzFounder, Teach First; CEO, Tiney The renewed call for more male teachers is but another iteration of the inflamed debate about masculinity, misleadingly called a crisis. This is not a crisis in masculinity, but a chronic stasis – the world is changing, but masculinity is not changing with it. Women have been entering areas of work traditionally reserved for men, while men remain resistant to the converse. This is not an expression of genetic proclivity, but of socially engendered roles and perhaps of the gender pay gap. We have a plethora of public male role models in most fields – industry, the arts, sports. What we lack are alternative models in the private sphere of invisible (and generally unpaid) domestic work and caring, or in primary schools. Masculinity is still defined largely in terms of public profile, competitive success and social status. Significantly, these qualities confer power over others. Misogyny is not the hatred of all women, but the fear, expressed as hatred, of non-compliant women who threaten the status quo. We do not need to reaffirm masculinity, we need to redefine it, blurring the destructive boundaries between the masculine and MulhollandGoldsithney, Cornwall Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
