Rotherham Council outlines major foster care overhaul after warning over Marcia Grant death
Marcia Grant died after being run over by a 12 year old boy in her care in April 2023
Last updated 2nd Dec 2025
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council has drawn up a major overhaul of its fostering service after a coroner found failings in how it placed and risk-assessed children contributed to the death of foster carer Marcia Grant.
A report presented to the council’s Improving Lives Select Commission on Tuesday, December 2 sets out changes to how children are matched with foster carers and how risks are recorded and shared.
Mrs Grant, aged 60, died on April 5, 2023, outside her home in Sheffield after being hit by a car driven by a 12-year-old boy in her care, referred to in official documents as Child X.
An inquest earlier this year heard that the child had a history of going missing and had previously received a youth caution for carrying a knife. He had been placed with Mrs Grant for six days at the time of the incident.
Assistant Coroner Marilyn Whittle concluded that RMBC had failed to have “appropriate systems and processes in place when placing foster children”, including incomplete paperwork, poor communication of risks and a lack of proper risk assessments.
She went on to issue a formal prevention of future deaths notice, raising three key concerns: a shortage of suitable foster placements; failures in documentation and information-sharing; and the lack of a structured way of assessing risk for foster carers and other children in a household.
The council’s response accepts the seriousness of the coroner’s findings and sets out changes already made and further work planned.
Nicola Curley, strategic director of children and young people’s services, told councillors that the placement decision in Mrs Grant’s case had been made by the ‘head of service’.
Ms Curley told the meeting: “A social worker cannot just ring up a foster carer and ask to place a child… the decision was made by the most senior person. It wasn’t ideal… but it was made with good intention… and it was thought through.
“There was no lack of supervision. What we hadn’t done, collectively as a whole service, is written everything down in a format that we were then able to show the assistant coroner.”
She added that “very careful mechanisms” are now in place to strengthen decision-making and ensure full information is available before a child is placed.
These include creating a dedicated fostering duty worker to co-ordinate information about children who need placements and match them more carefully with carers. The council has also updated its scheme of delegation so that senior managers, rather than more junior staff, now sign off placement decisions.
Placement referral forms have been changed so they are completed more consistently and stored differently on children’s files, with clearer sections for risk analysis. The aim is to make sure all known risks are set out in one place and shared with everyone involved before a child moves in.
Since the inquest, the council says it has reviewed when separate risk assessment forms should be used and is updating staff training on risk assessment and recording. New risk sections are being built into key documents so that potential risks to carers and any other children in the home are considered routinely before placements go ahead.
The report also highlights wider pressures on children’s services, noting that a shortage of foster placements is a national problem. The coroner’s report said that this lack of placements had pushed staff into trying “creative solutions” and ultimately led to an unsuitable placement being accepted.
Rotherham Council says it has been working for several years to increase local provision. On the residential side, a multi-year development plan is expected to deliver 20 residential beds and two emergency beds across 11 registered settings by March 2027. So far, 13 residential beds and one emergency bed have opened.
On fostering, the council says it has bucked the national trend. While local authority foster carer approvals have fallen by about a third nationally since 2021, Rotherham has increased approvals from 11 in 2022/23 to 17 in 2023/24, making it one of the strongest performers in the region.
A fostering transformation board has been set up to oversee the changes, provide extra scrutiny of the council’s strategy for finding enough placements, and make sure the authority fully responds to the coroner’s recommendations. The board is expected to complete its work by May 2026, with any major proposals to be set out by the end of the 2026/27 financial year.
Foster carers have already been consulted on the inquest findings and asked for ideas on improving information-sharing and placement referrals. Their suggestions include clearer information about how the service is structured and better, staged information about children before carers agree to take a placement. Carers will help co-produce new guidance on matching and information-sharing.
Most of the detailed transformation work has been classed as exempt from publication and withheld from the press and the public.
The council says releasing it could identify individuals, affect staff and harm its commercial position when commissioning services. A summary of the plan is included in the public report.