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4. Meeting the needs of foster carers
4.1 There are many different types of fostering arrangement. People can want to become foster carers to provide emergency or short-term placements to give the parents and/or the child a break; they can be keen to foster children or young people with specific needs, such as behavioural issues or who are physically disabled. They can be keen to foster with a view to adoption or providing a permanent home. They may want to provide a home only for babies or young children. They can feel able to look after just one child or many.
4.2 Whatever the preferred fostering arrangement, the research shows that the reasons why people choose to become foster carers appear consistent. They have a strong sense of wanting to provide a loving home to a child in need. They feel they have skills that can be best suited to providing care within their own home. They want flexibility to balance existing domestic commitments and any paid work they may have. They expect to be adequately compensated for the expenses they incur when fostering. More and more carers see foster care as a job and wish to be paid in a way that allows them to devote themselves full-time to this role.
4.3 Similarly, the factors that people who are foster carers enjoy about the job are consistent: when they are valued for creating a safe, stable and secure environment for their child or young person and involved in decisions that will affect the child or young person and themselves; when the child or young person is happier; says he or she feels cared for; and is achieving good outcomes, for example turning up at school regularly; getting involved in an activity etc. They value the support of the local authority or voluntary or independent agency, including the training, development and information that is made available. Crucially, however, a named support provider appears to be the one resource that is most valued and considered critical to both ensuring the stability of a placement and also to successful retention.
4.4 The problems expressed by foster carers are also consistent. Most do not feel adequately rewarded financially. Many do not feel valued by other professionals. They are concerned that they are not given information routinely about the child or young person before they arrive with them and that subsequently their knowledge and understanding of the child or young person is not systematically taken into account during the ongoing review of a child's care plan. They can get frustrated when they are put under pressure to care for those children and young people who are outwith their usual fostering experience, e.g. teenagers with behavioural issues. They can also be worried about the lack of support to them and their families if problems arise with the placement, such as allegations made against them.
Supporting foster carers to provide safe, stable and secure placements
4.5 It is particularly striking how consistently the research states that foster carers want their role and contribution to improving a child or young person's outcomes to be valued and acknowledged within the wider group of professionals responsible for a child's care. Clearly, their systematic involvement in the development and review of the child or young person's care plan must become routine practice, together with their role and, indeed, responsibility both to understand the specific needs of the child or young person and to help identify how these can be met by both themselves as foster carers and other relevant professionals, such as the child's teacher, their nurse, and others. This is also essential when the school, the social worker, the police officer etc, all rely on the foster carer to support them in their efforts to tackle the child's behaviour and needs. To participate in this way clearly requires them to have access to relevant information about the child or young person.
Remuneration for foster carers
4.6 This is consistently identified as a barrier to the recruitment and retention of foster carers. The lack of consistency of rates of payment across Scotland appears to be a source of discontent as much as the adequacy of the level of allowance paid and whether or not fees are paid. There are also differences in approach to remuneration used by voluntary and independent bodies as distinct from local authorities. There can also be problems faced by foster carers in relation to the financial procedures used to claim appropriate allowances. Foster carers want these procedures to be more transparent and less complex.
4.7 The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Bill would give Scottish Ministers powers to create a national system of allowances through regulations (see Annex A).
4.8 A further incentive to recruitment and retention could be to develop a national approach towards a foster carer's entitlement to grants or enhanced allowances that will enhance their capacity to care for a range of children and young people. These could include home extensions and aids and adaptations to the home.
Wider support for foster carers
4.9 More consistent terms and conditions for foster carers across Scotland, such as entitlement to paid holidays, are also identified as factors which could help with recruitment and retention, in addition to the provision of breaks for foster carers, if this is in the best interests of the foster child.
4.10 We have already mentioned the critical importance of a support worker. Foster carers do need regular access to and contact with a support worker. The child's lead professional should also be able to support the carer to deal with stressful situations, such as tackling appropriately the problematic behaviour of the child or young person. A local authority or the relevant voluntary or independent agency should also provide support to the foster carer with identifying learning and development needs.
4.11 A support role is also required to ensure that foster carers are clear and confident about how to make a complaint about any matter affecting the child or in relation to their work as a foster carer. Crucially, they must have confidence that they will receive support and fair treatment if allegations against them arise.
4.12 They need to know the procedure for responding to allegations and understand when and why they may need to receive independent support and how this can be accessed. Foster carers should have the support they need while allegations are treated seriously and investigated properly and promptly.
4.13 Foster carers also indicate that the opportunity to meet with other foster carers is desirable and that support for the children of foster carers including opportunities for these children and young people to meet others in their situation can be helpful.
4.14 The National Fostering and Kinship Care Strategy will identify specific proposals for providing more systematic support to foster carers. These will aim to support the efforts of local authorities and agencies to recruit and retain more foster carers and to increase the capacity of fostering services to support children and young people with a range of specific, often challenging, needs. It will also reinforce the requirement under Getting it Right for Every Child that carers are a part of the planning process.
4.15 As the National Fostering and Kinship Care Strategy develops, there is the continuous requirement to balance the importance of personalising services to meet the specific needs of children and young people with the development of national approaches towards providing support to foster carers. We need to keep this under review to ensure we get the balance right.
4.16 We seek responses on
- Do you agree that foster carers should be more closely involved in the development and review of a foster child's care plan?
- Do you agree that there should be a minimum or standard rate of fostering allowances?
- Do you think that there should be a minimum or standard rate of fostering fees?
- Do you think that financial support should include an element for replacing or purchasing one-off items, such as a washing machine or a car?
- Do you think that registration of foster carers would enable them to improve their foster care service?
- Regarding the introduction of a national protocol for dealing with and responding to allegations, please tell us about any specific proposals for what this should include. As an example you may wish to look at the resource produced by The Fostering Network for the Department of Education and Skills in England. http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/resources-and-practice/IG00082/.
- How should such protocols balance the rights of children and young people to have their allegations properly investigated with the needs of carers for timely and appropriate support and advice? What potential difficulties would there be in developing and implementing such a protocol?
- What other information and support do you think would be helpful to carers in carrying out their job?
A support network for children of foster carers
A support network for foster carers
A key worker for foster carers
A regular training programme
A helpline to contact when problems arise, such as an allegation
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