CHILDREN LOOKED AFTER BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES
FOSTER
CARE:
CONCLUSIONS
132. Foster carers are an essential and still
under-valued part of the care system for looked-after children.
Their dedication and commitment should be saluted.
133. We take very seriously the evidence that
there is a developing crisis in recruiting and retaining foster
carers. Decades of neglect in providing support for foster carers
need to be remedied. New tasks are emerging for foster carers,
who are required to have a wider range of skills and knowledge
than in the past, and are often called upon to deal with children
with more challenging and complex problems. Carers require appropriate
financial support, as well as professional recognition and other
forms of support. While local authorities can still rely on significant
numbers of foster carers who are volunteers and are content to
receive only their expenses, it is questionable how long this
will continue, and many aspects of foster care already demand
more professionalism. Two thirds of the children and young people
in state care are placed in foster homes. If this resource fails,
it may be necessary to return to more reliance on residential
care, which is greatly more expensive and in many cases may be
less appropriate for the individuals concerned. A serious erosion
of the numbers of people willing to offer foster care could in
fact trigger the collapse of the entire system of child care in
its present form.
134. The question of payment to foster carers needs
to be tackled at two levels. Firstly, we believe it right that
all foster carers should be adequately reimbursed for actual
expenses incurred. The current situation, in which most local
authorities pay less than the NFCA recommended rates for reimbursement
of expenses, is not only unfair to carers, it acts as a strong
disincentive to the recruitment of carers on low incomes, who
cannot afford to top up from their own resources what the local
authority gives them. We therefore recommend that the Government
should require local authorities to reimburse carers at a realistic
rate for actual expenses incurred.
135. Secondly, we do not accept the Parliamentary
Under-Secretary's argument that fostering would be in danger of
ceasing to be a vocation if there were to be an element of reward
in payments to foster carers. We believe that there should be
a stepped scale of payments to carers, with the level of payment
being linked to the level of their skills and experience in dealing
with difficult or demanding children. We also believe that in
cases where lack of appropriate accommodation or means of transport
prevents suitable individuals from becoming foster carers, special
payments or other appropriate assistance should be available.
We recommend that the Government, in consultation with local government,
the NFCA and other interested bodies, should as a matter of urgency
draw up proposals for establishing a national framework of payments
along these lines.
136. The best independent foster care agencies show
what can be done in support of carers, given the availability
of sufficient funding. However, we are concerned that the proliferation
of these agencies is diverting resources from local authorities
which might be more effectively spent in other ways, and may be
leading to very distant placements for some young people (this
is also a concern in regard to residential placements—see
paragraph 171 below). Independent agencies have a role to play
within the care system, but it would be undesirable for local
authorities to become too reliant on them. We support the call
by many of our witnesses for stricter regulation of independent
fostering agencies. We recommend that all foster care agencies
should be subject to a mandatory requirement that they be approved,
registered and inspected. The Government should bring forward
legislation as soon as possible to achieve this.
137. In this context we note with concern the lack
of regulations to protect young people who come to this country
to learn English. At present, legislation only protects such young
people if they live in the same place for more than 28 days. We
believe that this is a loophole in the law which can be exploited
by abusers. We recommend that the relevant legislation should
be amended to protect young people who are placed in short-term
accommodation with another family by a third party through the
registration and inspection of language schools and host families,
and to prohibit language students from being accommodated in the
home of a person convicted of an offence against children.
138. We believe that local authorities should
invest more resources in the training of foster carers, in link
and support workers to liaise with carers, and in practicalities
like help with transport and insurance. We recommend that the
Government should investigate the possibility of setting up a
pension scheme for foster carers. We recommend that local authorities
should be required to ensure that foster carers receive appropriate
training, and to make training opportunities available throughout
carers' careers, not just when they first become carers.
139. Local authority investment in these areas is
likely to be cost-effective in the long term if it prevents serious
shortfalls in the number of carers, and if it removes the need
for undesirable and expensive placements in residential care.
We recommend that the Government should ensure that local authorities
are properly resourced to make these investments. It is essential
that there should be sufficient capacity in the system for children
to be offered an appropriate choice of placements. It is clear
from the evidence we have taken that this capacity does not currently
exist; remedying this situation will undoubtedly require the injection
of additional resources. Each local authority needs to have surplus
capacity at all times in order for real choice to be exercised;
this may require more stand-by payments to be made to foster carers.
140. Local authorities need to make greater efforts
to make foster caring an attractive option for volunteers from
a range of backgrounds. The ADSS told us that some local authorities
have positive recruitment policies aimed at groups which they
claim are under-represented among carers, such as single, older
and gay people, members of minority ethnic groups, and people
on low incomes. The "paramount consideration" in choosing
foster carers, according to Section 1 of the Children Act, must
be the welfare of the child, and it is important to remember that
appointment as a foster carer is a privilege, not an entitlement.
Subject to these considerations, however, we believe that people
from a variety of backgrounds should be encouraged to offer themselves
for appointment as foster carers, and that local authorities should
strive to disabuse potential volunteers from erroneous preconceptions
about the types of people who will be accepted as foster carers.
141. It is also important that social workers
should treat foster carers as colleagues, co-workers in a
team dealing with the needs of looked-after children, and that
they should recognise and draw upon the practical knowledge and
expertise which foster carers have built up.
142. There is scope for greater co-operation between
SSDs and other agencies, particularly housing, in relation to
foster care. Local authorities should wherever possible ensure
that potential foster carers are not deterred from taking on this
role by lack of suitable accommodation.
143. We support the recommendations made by Sir
William Utting in regard to the prevention of abuse in foster
care: in particular, his call for selection procedures for foster
carers to be strengthened and for a Code of Practice governing
the use of foster carers to be promulgated.
144. Local authorities' lack of information about
children who are being privately fostered is a matter of great
concern. Lack of information entails lack of protection. We strongly
support Sir William Utting and those other of our witnesses who
called for registration and inspection of private foster carers
to be made mandatory, and for failure to register to be made a
criminal offence.
145. It is important that the different issues and
concerns in relation to foster care are not dealt with in a piecemeal
fashion. We recommend that the Government, in addition to accepting
the specific proposals we have set out above, should develop and
publish a coherent and costed national strategy for the future
development of foster care. This is a task which the Government
may wish to entrust to the newly appointed UK Joint Working Group
on Foster Care, the setting up of which we welcome.
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