Room to Grow - Garden rental rooms for foster carers

This is not a call for competition and is not yet a contract opportunity.

** PLEASE NOTE: By Expressing an Interest in this event via the portal you are not confirming your place at the event. Please follow the instructions below to reserve your place. **

Background

Here at Somerset Council we are excited to be exploring ways to support our foster carers to increase their fostering capacity by freeing up an internal bedroom. We are hoping to do this via funding rental garden rooms in which they can house their home office, hobby room, gym, storage or for any other reason that is currently blocking a room in the house which could be used for fostering.

The idea of renting the garden room would be should the carer decide to stop fostering we will no longer pay the rent to the foster carer. The carer can either choose to continue the contract themselves or terminate the contract and the garden room be removed.

We are aware of a provider that is currently offering this service but that does not cover the majority of our county and fostering area and who only offer specific sizes of garden room to rent. We would therefore be keen to engage with anyone that currently offers this service or would be interested in expanding their business to do so in order to offer our foster carers more choice.

By providing this service to our foster carers and increasing their ability to care for more looked after young people you will be supporting children in care to remain closer to home and improving their outcomes.

It is anticipated that any new arrangements would commence from December 2025.