What we believe in

Position Statement 2: Skills Protect – the strategic development of foster care

April 2004

1 Introduction

1.1

Foster care provides a core service for the great majority of children and young people separated from their birth families and who are in public care. However, there is no simple description of what foster carers do and the term “foster care” covers a wide spectrum of situations. Foster carers can provide:

• short breaks for birth families with disabled children who have high support needs
• temporary care for children when families have a crisis that spins out of control
• care for children who have been abused or neglected
• care for children who need therapeutic help;
• care for children as an alternative to remand or secure accommodation and
• permanent families for children whose birth families cannot care for them.

1.2

Children in foster families can be aged from birth to 18 and beyond. They may be cared for with brothers and sisters. They may be cared for for a matter of days, months or years. They come from all sections of the community including other countries.

1.3

Foster carers provide these children and young people with safe and meaningful relationships, all the practical benefits of a home life, stimulation, guidance and advocacy, and the knowledge to negotiate and access education, health and other services essential to a child or young person’s growth and development. They also work with birth families and a wide range of professionals to return the child or young person back home as quickly as possible when this is the right thing to do for the child. Foster carers have a critical role that should be valued for what it contributes to a group of very vulnerable children and their birth families. It is a demanding role but it can be enormously satisfying.

1.4

Given the rewards from undertaking such a worthwhile and important task, it is surprising that the service as a whole is in a crisis. There are a number of areas where this is most apparent:

• recruitment and retention of a sufficient number of foster carers to meet demand for placements;
• providing children and young people with foster carers who have the right skills and knowledge to meet their needs;
• recruiting and retaining foster carers with the ability to sustain placements for children with severe emotional or behavioural problems;
• recruiting carers to meet the needs of children arising from their ethnicity, sexuality or specific impairment;
• maximising the potential contribution to the fostering service of all sections of the community by recruiting foster carers from minority ethnic groups, single carers, gay and lesbian carers and disabled carers;
• providing stable and secure placements, within easy travelling distance from a child’s family, school and community;
• developing a career structure and a system of rewards and remuneration that reflects the complexity of the task and enables foster carers to remain in the fostering service;
• ensuring that all foster carers can and do access appropriate training and support; and
• planning foster care resources that meet demand that can be variable.

1.5

None of these difficulties are insurmountable in themselves and there are many examples of excellent and high quality practice in each of these areas. Foster carers have proved themselves to be adaptable, resilient people and those that recruit, assess, train and support them equally so. The development of the independent and the voluntary sectors has resulted in new approaches to resolving the problems, and has been matched in many instances by innovations in the statutory sector.

1.6

BUT each of these problems has proved to be resistant to change as a whole.

2 Background

2.1

Much of the explanation for the current situation and its inherent difficulties can be found in the history of foster care. Foster care services and the work of foster carers in particular have evolved out of a volunteering history. This was embedded in the notion that the natural abilities of a largely female group of carers (notwithstanding the important contribution of their male partners) already engaged in the care of their own birth children, are readily transferable to the care of other people’s children. Although there has been recognition of the impact of separation from birth parents on children, and latterly of the impact of abuse, neglect and recently trauma, foster care skills continue to be identified as more akin to “naturally acquired” parenting skills than to the kinds of specialised skills associated with other caring roles such as residential care or nursing.

2.2

This position is unsustainable. Both government and service providers need to acknowledge that being a foster carer requires integrating the capacity to undertake the personal care of very vulnerable children in an intimate family setting with a relevant values, knowledge and skills base that is safe, effective and transparent. This requires a distinct shift away from a structure that has arisen out of the volunteering history of the service towards one that facilitates the complex and unique task that foster carers are required to undertake and a structure that sustains them in being able to do so.

2.3

It is clear that the current “crisis” in foster care is directly related to the tension between its historical development and the demands that arise from its actual current tasks. The development of professional foster care schemes within local authorities and other schemes such as “payment for skills” have gone some way to modernising the service. The establishment of an independent sector conversant with a business approach, including providing contracts for service, remuneration packages, career progression, training and support has further developed this. However, the overall impact of these developments has been to produce pockets of excellence but a service that is inadequately developed strategically and dependent on inconsistent and ad hoc arrangements which poorly serve the needs of children and young people and their families in a secure, planned and predictable way.

2.4

While progress has been made, there is an urgent need for uniform service standards which must include an appropriate professionalised framework of practice as well as recruitment, training, career progression, remuneration and contractual obligations. The wide variations in financial allowances made to cover the actual cost of caring for children is unacceptable. The fact that there is no uniform minimum allowance separates foster care from other child care provision such as child tax credits and child benefits and creates a postcode lottery of provision.

2.5

To deliver uniform standards, strategic, structural change is imperative, but this will entail confronting a number of dilemmas.

3 Dilemmas

3.1

On the one hand, children and young people need families who are committed to them in a personal sense, not professionally orientated carers concerned with careers, remuneration, pension packages and training. On the other hand, foster carers, in common with all other sections of society, need financial security in the present and in the future.

3.2

Some foster carers are related to their children or are friends of the family. They may not want to be regulated by the State and to have to comply with professional standards. They may nevertheless need remuneration and support and will need the same level of skills as “mainstream” carers.

3.3

A mixed economy of providers may produce problems when the care of children conflicts with the need for commissioners to manage resources from different providers at varying costs.

3.4

Foster care straddles a difficult boundary between the intimate, personal issues of family life and state regulated services in relation to vulnerable children.

3.5

Foster care formally comes to an end when young people reach 18 but young people need families committed to them throughout adulthood.

3.6

Foster carers provide 24-hour care, seven days a week that does not fit easily with 35-hour weekly patterns associated with other services.

3.7

Foster carers may do a “great job” and not see the relevance of continuing training or professional development.

4 BAAF’s position

BAAF believes that in order to develop a foster care service that is fit for the early 21st century, the structural problems that are embedded in the idea of it being a largely “volunteer” service must be comprehensively addressed. BAAF believes that foster care must be based on the development of the following:

4.1

A service with clear objectives that is primarily focussed on meeting the needs of “looked after” children and young people, recognising that these are both individual and complex. The service standards should be driven by the requirement that placements should be arranged with carers where the child or young person has the opportunity to develop a secure, stable and robust relationship that lasts as long as the child needs it.

4.2

A service where carers have a clear values, knowledge and skills framework that draws on and is connected to related caring professions such as social work, residential care and nursing, and are required to demonstrate that they are working within that framework.

4.3

A service where carers and other staff are registered with an appropriate national body (the relevant social care council) and meet the appropriate obligations and requirements of registration.

4.4

A service where career progression is related to a qualification framework that is nationally recognised and regulated.

4.5

A service where foster carers are remunerated according to their qualifications, experience and skills and where there is a clear contractual arrangement between the carer and the service provider.

4.6

A service where a minimum allowance is set in each country in the UK for children in foster care.

4.7

A service which matches the demands made of specific foster carers to their identified skills.

4.8

A service where foster carers are directly supported by social workers who understand the nature of the fostering task.

4.9

A service where foster carers are integrated as team members with other professionals delivering assessment, caring and planning services to the child and their family.

4.10

A service which enables foster carers to draw on the relevant expertise of teachers, therapists, health professionals and others.

4.11

A service that is based on a mixed economy of direct local government provision as well as provision by the voluntary and independent sector.

5 The way forward

5.1

BAAF believes that the responsibility for developing a foster care service “fit for purpose” is the responsibility of central government in partnership with local government and the voluntary and independent sectors. Government must acknowledge the specific needs of those children separated from their families who become the temporary responsibility of the State. This will require amendments to primary legislation and a strategic approach to service development based on a career structure including remuneration. The relevant social care council and TOPPS (Training Organisation for the Personal Social Services) will need to amend their area of responsibility to include foster care and integrate their requirements with others in the caring professions. The relevant bodies responsible for social care inspection will need to amend their remit to inspect and approve based on revised regulations.

5.2

The development of the foster care service based on this position is long-term. It will require a short, medium and long-term timetable to deliver it successfully.

5.3

The foster care service and foster carers are critical to the delivery of effective services for children separated from their families. The consistent planning and delivery of high standard direct care to the child or young person, and the effective contribution to a team approach to returning the child to their birth family or placing the child in another family which can offer permanence, will only take place when the historical and structural problems of the foster care service are addressed.