Memorandum submitted by The Fostering
Network
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— The Children and Young Persons
Bill needs to contain a provision that would enable the regulation
of provision of placements by former foster carers to young people
between the ages of 18 and 21, in order to ensure both foster
carers and young people receive the support they need to provide
the best possible platform for moving towards independence at
a more suitable age.
— The Government should explicitly
fulfil its White Paper pledge to create a statutory duty for local
authorities to make sufficient and diverse provision of quality
placements.
— The Bill can be used to address
the anomaly that foster carers who are subject to an allegation
are able to be, and regularly are, suspended without pay.
1. This submission is in response to the
inquiry's initial examination of the provisions of the Children
and Young Persons Bill. It will be followed by a more detailed
paper that will examine the wider implications of the Care Matters
process for looked-after children with particular reference to
foster care.
2. The Fostering Network is the UK's leading
charity for everyone involved in fostering. With a membership
of over 50,000 foster carers, all local authorities, and many
independent fostering providers, the Fostering Network is uniquely
placed to bring people and organisations together to improve the
lives of children in foster care.
ENABLING YOUNG
PEOPLE TO
STAY WITH
THEIR FORMER
FOSTER CARERS
BETWEEN THE
AGES OF
18 AND 21
3. One of the greatest disappointments of
the Care Matters process, and the Children and Young Persons Bill
in particular, has been the gap between expectations and delivery
on the ability of young people to stay with their former foster
carers between the ages of 18 and 21.
4. We believe that the ability to provide
stable placements for young people making the transition into
adult life, both for those going into higher education and for
those needing more intensive support, can make a massive difference
to their life chances. Many young people in care will have experienced
significant disruption in their lives, and they are likely to
need additional help and support to enable them to succeed educationally
and make a successful transition to adulthood. Despite their vulnerability,
children in care are being required to leave their foster carers
before they are 18 (ie at 17)—a younger age than most young
people have to leave their families. On average most young people
now leave home at 24.
5. At present many local authorities operate
an unregulated form of support, usually a "supported lodgings"
arrangement, to enable foster carers to continue to provide a
placement for that young person post-18. However, there are no
guarantees of any support for the foster carer or young person,
there may be no training available, there are no agreed standards
that govern the provision of this service, and often there will
be a lack of clarity concerning financial support. In addition
some local authorities do not even provide this option at present.
6. The Government will be piloting arrangements
for young people to remain with their foster carers up until they
are 21; however unlike independent social work practices and other
new measures being piloted, there is nothing in the Bill that
will underpin them or enable the roll-out of this provision across
the country.
7. We believe it will be necessary to introduce
regulation, which can be informed by the pilots, that will guarantee
minimum standards of service and entitlement and will ensure foster
carers who agree to continue to care for a care leaver have access
to legal insurance, training, annual reviews and a supervising
social worker. Care leavers also require the protection that regulation
can provide. Regulation may be needed to clarify the requirements
for the provision of financial support for the placement and what
standards govern the quality of provision. Regulation should also
prevent myriad interpretations of the scheme across local authorities,
avoiding a "postcode lottery" of support that may stop
foster carers from being able to provide these placements to young
people desperately in need of continued assistance.
8. The Fostering Network has heard of many
cases where young people have been pushed out into independent
living before they are ready due to lack of local authority support,
but also from many foster carers who have made significant sacrifices
to continue to provide care without any support. We list two examples
below that help explain why greater support is necessary:
CASE STUDIES
Sue
Sue has fostered a young person who arrived as
a young teenager suffering significant trauma, who with her support
managed to settle and succeed. He became head boy of his school
and is currently at college studying for his A-Levels with the
plan of going onto University and a career in the RAF.
However, when he turns 18 during his A-Levels
all support that had been given by the local authority will end,
leaving him on his own. In order to continue to provide stability
for this young person Sue is spending up to £20,000 in order
to convert their loft so that he can continue to stay with them
while Sue fosters other children. Sue is making huge financial
sacrifice to ensure that this young person continues to have the
stability he needs, but she should not have to, and most foster
carers could never afford to do this.
Pam and Dave
Pam and Dave have been foster carers for over
14 years, fostering more than 600 children due to their taking
a huge number of emergency placements. However, they have also
provided long-term placements for a number of young people, and
they have found themselves supporting their foster children who
have turned 18 without help from the local authority.
Their first foster child, who is now in his 20s,
left the foster home at 18 to move into his own flat, but he was
unable to cope. They woke up one morning to find him sleeping
in his car outside the house and he moved back in to their home
temporarily without local authority support.
They recently had another foster child whom they
continued to look after until she was nearly 20 and supported
at their own expense for nearly two years. When she left their
home they did not receive any significant help from their leaving
care team. Pam says "she is struggling quite a lot. She has
£42 a week to pay for bills/food/clothes and travel, she's
very lonely and finding things difficult so she is up here with
us most of the time. We are in council accommodation so we can't
be paid to have a lodger. She had been part of our family for
five years and we don't know what we can do."
9. At the Second Reading and Committee stage
debates in the Lords the principle that young people should be
able to stay with their former foster carers once they turned
18 received support across the house, echoing the support for
such measures from across the children's sector. The two amendments
below were laid at committee, one that would enable the Secretary
of State to regulate placements once more information had become
available, and one to enable foster carers to retain their status
as foster carers while only caring for young people over the age
of 18.
Clause 19
BARONESS WALMSLEY, BARONESS SHARP OF GUILDFORD
84 Page 16, line 30, at end insert—
The appropriate national authority may by regulations,
make provision about the arrangements for relevant children and
former relevant children to live with a former foster parent."
BARONESS MORRIS OF BOLTON, BARONESS WALMSLEY,
EARL OF LISTOWEL
"Retention of foster parent status
93 Insert the following new Clause—
(1) This section applies in a case where a child
("C") who is being looked-after by a foster parent or
parents ("FP") reaches the age of 18 and FP continues
to provide care for C.
(2) FP shall retain their status as foster parent
and, accordingly, shall continue to receive all applicable benefits
and support from the local authority."
10. We remain concerned that the Government
is not clear about its long-term plans for this provision. Firstly
it has argued that it does not yet know what regulation would
be needed, which is why we believe the Bill should include an
enabling power rather than specific regulation at this stage.
Secondly it has argued regulation could be provided through the
Health and Social Care Bill provisions for adult services, an
approach that would be a bureaucratic nightmare. With the current
transition between children's and adult services for the relatively
small number of disabled young people in the care system already
fraught with difficulty there would be major problems in managing
the transition for a much large group who would only need continuing
support for a shorter time. Re-approval of foster carers as adult
placement carers to look after the same young person would be
bureaucratic and would lead to the situation where support for
a maximum of three years from 18 to 21 was being inspected by
the new Care Commission rather than Ofsted. These young people
are "former relevant children" and Children's Services
and Leaving Care teams have the ability to provide some support
to them such as the personal advisors, being extended under this
Bill. It would be far simpler to use this framework to regulate
this new provision rather than adult services.
11. Again while we do not believe the Government
is required to detail specific regulations at this point, we,
and others such as the National Leaving Care Advisory Service
and the British Association of Adoption and Fostering, strongly
believe regulation will be required to make this important proposal
work across the country. We are convinced the Bill should give
the Secretary of State the power to introduce regulations to prevent
delay in rolling this scheme out to the thousands of young people
it could benefit.
PROVIDING CLARITY
ON LOCAL
AUTHORITY REQUIREMENTS
FOR PLACEMENT
PROVISION
12. The Care Matters White Paper stated
that the Government would "impose a statutory duty on local
authorities to secure a sufficient and diverse provision of quality
placements within their local area." Unfortunately the Children
and Young Persons Bill currently does not contain an explicit
requirement to achieve this. We believe that the creation of a
clear statutory duty will focus the attention of local authorities
on ensuring they have sufficient appropriate provision, delivered
both in-house and through the independent sector, in their local
area and help ensure children and young people are given placements
appropriate to their needs. This would give local authorities
a clear focus to the planning of placement provision.
13. The Government has argued that the Bill's
measures to restrict out-of-authority placements would create
an implicit requirement on local authorities to provide sufficient
local placements. We believe that the Government's proposed mechanism
lacks clarity and that an explicit provision is needed to ensure
local government is clear of their responsibilities. We have also
expressed some concerns that a rigid local authority boundary
requirement may sometimes be a clumsy tool to ensure quality placement
decision-making particularly when foster carers live close to
local authority boundaries, although we approve of the overall
principle of reducing unnecessary out-of-authority placements.
14. This issue was raised as an amendment
(see below) at the Committee Stage of the Bill's reading in the
House of Lords by Earl of Listowel, Baroness Meacher, Lord Judd
and Baroness Walmsley. We believe that the duty outlined in Care
Matters needs an explicit requirement in the Bill, either similar
or identical to the Lords amendment, so that local authorities
have a clear duty to provide sufficient appropriate placements
and would like to see this provision on the face of the Bill.
Before Clause 7
EARL OF LISTOWEL, BARONESS MEACHER, LORD JUDD,
BARONESS WALMSLEY
19 Insert the following new Clause—
"Provision of appropriate placements
In section 23 of the 1989 Act (provision of accommodation
and maintenance by local authority for children whom they are
looking after), after subsection (2A) insert—
"(2B) A local authority must provide a sufficient
and diverse provision of appropriate placements within their local
area"."
CONTINUATION OF
FEE PAYMENT
UNTIL AN
ALLEGATION INVESTIGATION
IS COMPLETE
15. The possibility of an allegation being
made against them is a constant fear for foster carers. Due to
the nature of the children and young people placed with them,
the often fraught relationships between foster carers and birth
parents, the tensions that can arise in any placement, the potential
for misunderstandings of everyday behaviour that before they entered
care had been a prelude to abuse, the reality is that many foster
carers will face an allegation that is unfounded. Surveys have
shown that around a third of all foster carers will face an allegation
during their fostering career and the vast majority of these turn
out to be unfounded.
16. Government timescales for the resolution
of allegations, set out in its Working Together to Safeguard
Children guidance, are routinely missed in allegations cases
against foster carers. Working Together states that 80%
of allegations should be resolved within a month, 90% within three
months and all should be resolved within a year. Research[33]
has shown that 50% of allegations cases against foster carers
last longer than three months and one in 10 last longer than a
year, in some incidences lasting several years. To compound matters
in the third of all allegations cases where some or all children
are removed—de facto suspension—almost all
foster carers have their fostering income cut and 46% have their
income stopped altogether. The research has also shown that 60%
of foster carers facing allegations are not receiving the access
to independent support that they desperately need and are required
to receive under the current National Minimum Standards for Fostering
Services.
17. We will return to this issue in our
second submission to the inquiry on the wider Care Matters agenda
focusing on timescales and independent support. However, while
we welcome the Bill's introduction of the independent review mechanism
currently used by prospective adopters to act as a quasi-appeals
mechanism for foster carers who have had their approval removed,
we believe it should address the crucial issue of suspension without
pay.
18. The emotional strain and the length
of time taken to resolve some investigations have a huge impact
on the foster carers and their children and when this is combined
with the withdrawal of financial support it can force many good
foster carers out of fostering. We believe that foster carers
should continue, where paid, to receive their fee payment (the
money given as remuneration for the foster carers' work, skills
and experience) and a portion of their allowance (the money paid
to cover the cost of looking after children) that relates to ongoing
fostering costs.
19. In the Lords the amendment below was
submitted and received support from a wide range of peers. We
believe an amendment along these lines would protect foster carers
from the immense financial hardship that currently can accompany
an allegations investigation, give local authorities greater incentive
to resolve investigations within an acceptable timescale and reduce
the number of foster carers who cease to foster as a result of
failures in the allegation investigation system.
After Clause 29
BARONESS WALMSLEY, BARONESS SHARP OF GUILDFORD,
LORD JUDD
98 Insert the following new Clause—
(1) Section 49 of the Children Act 2004 (c.
31) (payment to foster parents) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (4) insert—
"(5) Payment of the fee to a foster
parent should continue until a qualifying determination has been
reached"."
CONCLUSION
20. The Fostering Network believes the three
core issues outlined above are issues that should be addressed
directly in the Children and Young Persons Bill, and would welcome
the Committee's consideration of these areas for amendment. Our
second submission on the wider Care Matters process will address
the increasing professionalization of foster care, and a range
of matters for foster carers and looked-after children that can
be tackled by improvements to guidance, the new National Minimum
Standards for fostering and improve inspection procedures.
February 2008
33 Swain, Allegations in Foster Care-A UK study
of foster carers' experiences of allegations (The Fostering
Network, 2006). Back
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