Now Foster Anti-Slavery Statement

Our commitment

At Now Foster, we are committed to ensuring that there is no form of slavery, forced or compulsory labour or servitude or human trafficking in any part of our operations or supply chains.

This statement sets out our risk analysis for the financial year ending 31 March 2026 and explains the steps that we have taken to fulfil our commitment.

Our organisation

Now Foster: The Future is a private company limited by guarantee without share capital and incorporated in England and Wales under company number 13988407. Headquartered in London, Now Foster is a registered charity (charity number 1207932) working with local authorities, charities, technology providers and other partners to improve fostering recruitment and support. Our activities are primarily UK-based, and we employ a small team of staff, while working with various professional contractors and suppliers.

Now Foster has no subsidiaries or other affiliated companies.

Our operations and supply chains

Our operations mainly involve our supply of fostering recruitment and support services to stakeholders within certain regions of England, such as local authorities, prospective foster carers and intermediary organisations. We also enter into ancillary partnerships connected with those primary activities.

Our suppliers are mainly based within the UK, and those mostly include IT suppliers, fostering steering groups, professional advisers and suppliers of office space. Our ex-UK suppliers are mainly based in the USA or the EU, such as digital service providers, payment processors and data processors.

Our approach to slavery and human trafficking

We are committed to maintaining consistently good ethical standards in all of our stakeholder relationships, and we have implemented an anti-slavery policy to ensure that all our personnel perform their duties ethically and in line with our expectations. We also expect our suppliers to take a similar approach.

Accordingly, even though we consider the risk of slavery and human trafficking within our own operations to be low, we are committed to taking proportionate steps to reduce risk. In particular, we have put in place systems in order:

• to recruit and engage staff and contractors through fair and lawful employment and worker practices;
• to train our staff and contractors on slavery and human-trafficking risks and the related legal requirements;
• to seek to work with reputable suppliers and partners who share our commitment to ethical operational practices;
• to identify, assess and monitor potential risk areas in our operations or supply chains;
• to mitigate any risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring in our operations or supply chains;
• to protect our personnel from any threats of harassment, violence or intimidation;
• to protect whistle blowers through our confidential reporting process; and
• to investigate and respond appropriately to any concerns about slavery or labour exploitation that are raised with us.

Compliance in our supply chains

To ensure compliance in our supply chains, we have put in place a procurement policy that requires:

• all our staff with responsibility for procuring supplies from suppliers to observe diligent standards of honesty and fairness, to work in a manner that ensures due accountability and to report any perceived breach of anti-slavery rules in a timely manner; and
• all our suppliers to comply with all the requirements arising from our obligations under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, including a commitment to deal with us in a professional manner that is transparent, accountable, auditable and free from ethical ambiguities.

In our due diligence processes for suppliers, we take a risk-based approach to determine the extent and frequency of assessments. For any supplier that we perceive as potentially risky or vulnerable from an anti-slavery perspective, we conduct due diligence on it (including enhanced due diligence, where appropriate), and take any relevant best-practice guidance into account, before we allow it to become a supplier to Now Foster.

We also expect all our delivery partners and other organisations that we engage with to ensure that their own goods, materials, services, activities and labour-related supply chains are free from any form of modern slavery or human trafficking. Accordingly, we endeavour to ensure that those obligations are included as contractual obligations within our supply contracts.

As part of our ongoing risk mitigation process, we intend to act promptly in the event that we become aware of any anti-slavery compliance breach in business or supply chains, and to incorporate any learnings from such action into our anti-slavery risk-management process.

Our risk analysis for our 2025/26 financial year

On the basis of the assessment of our operations and supply chains carried out during the financial year, we consider that there is a relatively low risk of slavery and human trafficking within both our own operations and our supply chains.

Nonetheless, we are conscious of the need to remain vigilant about any such risks and to keep enhancing our effectiveness in combating any slavery and human trafficking, so we will review this statement annually and update it as our organisation develops and put in place any additional measures that may be appropriate from time to time.

Statutory information

This statement is made under section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015. It is our anti-slavery statement for the financial year ending 31 March 2026, and it was approved by our board of trustees on 29 July 2026.