Foster Carers

[Mr Laurence Robertson in the Chair]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the recruitment and retention of foster carers.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the supporting Members who made it possible to secure this debate. I also thank the Fostering Network, Home for Good and one of my local authorities, South Tyneside, for organising meetings and relevant briefings for me and my team, which were very useful for this debate. I put on record my thanks to those bodies for their work in championing the overlooked and neglected fostering sector. I am sure all Members present will want to join me in welcoming the Fostering Network and foster carers to the Public Gallery. It is great to see them here.

One cannot overestimate the important role fostering plays across child protection and safeguarding. In a climate where, over the last 12 years, local authorities have been forced to adapt their operations through cuts to local expenditure, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, the demand for foster carers has never been greater, with many children needing emergency support. That is why I will focus my opening remarks on why the fostering sector and carers need increased recognition and wraparound support from local authorities and independent fostering agencies.

While the debate is centred on the recruitment and retention of foster carers, we also need to look at the challenges faced by the sector more broadly, and at where we can share experiences of local authorities and constituents to not only platform the sector, but raise its profile and actively encourage people to enter into fostering.

The Welsh Government’s initiative Foster Wales has created a network of local authority fostering services across Wales, showing a clear national commitment to the cause. Does the hon. Lady agree that England and Scotland would benefit from a similar national call to action?

Yes, I agree, and I will refer to a similar point in my speech.

As I was preparing for this debate and looking at the statistics, two particular facts on recruitment stood out to me. First, the number of initial inquiries to foster is at an all-time high. There were 160,635 initial inquiries from prospective fostering households in the year ending 31 March 2021. In contrast, only 10,145 applications—a mere 6% of initial inquiries—were actually received. Secondly, according to the annual fostering statistics published by Ofsted, the number of foster carers in England has increased by only 4% since 2014, while the number of children in foster care has increased by 11%.

Those statistics show a crisis in recruitment and retention. Members on both sides must ask why those significant shortfalls in the fostering sector are occurring and what we in this place can do to help to alleviate this recruitment and retention crisis. I believe that we need to champion foster carers, but central to that must be deeds, not just words: we need to make sure that foster carers are fairly paid and respected as workers.

Set out in its 2021 “State of the Nation’s Foster Care” report, the Fostering Network’s findings on pay are damning:

“Over a third of foster carers said that their allowances do not meet the full cost of looking after a child.”

That is certainly something I can give personal testimony of, from my experience as a foster carer before entering this place; it has also been said to me today by some of the foster carers present.

Secondly, the report notes:

“Fourteen local authorities reported that their foster care allowances were below the NMA for at least one age group across England. Of these, two were in London, four were in the South East and ten were in the area of the rest of England.”

My hon. Friend is making a meaningful speech, including about her own experiences as a foster carer. She may or may not know that I used to be a manager in fostering, and for as long as I can remember there was an issue with the retention of foster carers and with those carers not being valued enough. Does my hon. Friend agree that the severe cuts to local government funding have had an indirect impact on the support that social workers can offer foster carers, which in turn has an impact on their ability to continue fostering and how they can look after, or manage the welfare of, a child?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we cannot keep taking money out of local authorities and expect them to still deliver the same level of services. The impact, unfortunately, is felt by the children and young people who are in the fostering system or child services.

The financial pressures and stresses felt by carers, highlighted by the Fostering Network’s research, are only set to get worse. The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers believes that the Government should urgently make a pay award to foster carers, both within local authorities and independent fostering agencies, to preserve and protect this precious resource for children and young people in need. This would be an important signal to foster carers that the Government really do value their contribution.

Another critical issue that we have to be aware of is the responsibility local authorities and IFAs have in providing vital—often emergency—wraparound support for foster carers and their families. I put on record my thanks to South Tyneside Council, one of my local authorities, for its progressive outlook in prioritising this area. First and foremost, we have to recognise that each child currently being supported through fostering services has different and complex needs, which must be met from the first moment that child comes under the care of their carer. That is why South Tyneside’s model of training carers to degrees, whereby they can be matched with the child best suited to their level of training—a model that is in the best interests of all parties and, most importantly, those of the child or young person—is highly commendable. In this, it is vital that children are kept as close to the local authority as possible. This approach means that at crisis point there is no delay in support, and any crisis has a better chance of being mitigated, as tailored, traumatic and therapeutic support can be accessed quickly.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on this important issue. Regarding the role of local authorities and the point about funding, does she agree that the crisis with children’s social workers and the shortage that we have is exacerbating the problems, and will impact on the very commendable operating model she is talking about?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. As has been said, the funding that is being taken out of the system means that, unfortunately, we are not continuing to provide the support that is needed, in terms of both social workers and the many other people who are involved in children’s care.

The system South Tyneside Council has in place means that if a breakdown occurs between the child and foster family, the local authority is accountable, thus upholding the fostering standards to improve outcomes. With such support mechanisms in place, more people will be encouraged to become foster carers.

However, we must recognise that South Tyneside’s model relies on factors for which the responsibility lies truly at the feet of Government Ministers. The cuts to local authorities over the past 12 years, along with the present day record levels of children needing emergency foster care mean that my local authority, like most others, must turn to independent fostering agencies to plug the gap. The money local authorities have to spend from Government grants, council tax and business rates has fallen by 16% since 2010. That means that local authorities have an increasingly limited capacity to respond to significant inflationary pressures.

While I respect the work that members of IFAs do to alleviate the pressure felt by local authorities, those agencies have the ability to add another complex, unnecessary layer between the child and the local authority, meaning that when crisis hits, unnecessary delays, which are detrimental to all involved, are often hard to avoid. In South Tyneside Council, 50% of children are placed into IFAs.

We also need to break down the popular perceptions of fostering, which undermine the diverse and varying shapes that it can take. Fostering should not be compared with adoption, although it often is. We need to break through the perception that fostering is a means, whereas adoption is the end, because one size does not fit all. We also need to recognise that circumstances in the lives of carers can change. The value of a carer fostering one child needs to be recognised as the same as a carer who may foster many children.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. The House is always at its best when Members draw on their personal experience and my hon. Friend’s speech shows that she knows what she is talking about. I add my thanks to Fostering Network, who I have worked with a lot in the past and who I have found to be incredibly helpful.

I want to pick up on black, Asian and minority ethnic foster carers and children from BAME communities. BBC analysis shows that two thirds of councils in England have a shortage of BAME foster carers, but 23% of children on the waiting list are from BAME backgrounds. Black boys are left longest on the waiting lists. I wondered whether my hon. Friend might comment, and I hope the Minister will also pick up on that point.

That point came up in my meeting with the head of children’s services in my local authority. As my hon. Friend says, we are desperately short of BAME foster carers.

Often children arrive into foster care with nothing apart from the clothes they are wearing. The responsibility lies firmly with the fostering family to pick up from there, otherwise the child would have nothing.

What do we need from the Government? I would like the Minister to look at and seriously consider the Mockingbird strategy as adopted by South Tyneside and many others, and to listen to best practice from my and other local authorities. I hope we will hear more on that today from other Members.

The Mockingbird model is based on the idea of an extended family. The strategy focuses on a fostering hub, where satellite carers work in sync to provide specialist and centralised care to children along with real-time support for those satellite carers. Mockingbird means intervention can take place without the need to necessarily remove children completely from their support network, should an emergency occur. Depending on circumstances, the programme can be adjusted to include birth families and adoptive families, and to provide support for independent living, while giving assurance to foster carers and those in care that a secure and close support network is at hand.

I also want the Minister to listen to the recommendations set out by the Fostering Network, which with others is calling for a fully funded national fostering strategy, a national fostering leadership board and a national register of foster carers. In addition, the Government need to carry out a comprehensive review of the minimum levels of fostering allowance, using up-to-date evidence to ensure foster carers are given sufficient payment to cover the full cost of looking after a child.

There is no one quick fix to address the issues relating to the retention of foster carers. The themes of carers feeling unsupported, making a financial loss and not being treated as workers would lead to a high turnover rate and chronic difficulties in recruitment in any workforce. I hope that today’s debate acts as an opportunity to address Members’ concerns from their constituencies and encourages the Minister to put recommendations in place.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in Westminster Hall once again, Mr Robertson. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate and sharing her personal experience. As Members from across the House have said, it is truly inspiring.

My partner and I hope one day, when our children are slightly older, to offer a home and an opportunity to young people. For eight and a half years before entering this place, I worked as a head of year, dealing with behavioural and pastoral issues in the secondary education sector, and I had direct contact with some of the fantastic foster carers of the children I was proud to look after. It was an enlightening and warming story. Looking at how to spend money from the budget to invest in those young people and give them exciting opportunities outside the school gates, as well as pushing their learning and educational outcomes, was something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I want to focus on the great work that is being done in the constituency I am proud to serve, Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, and across the wider city of Stoke-on-Trent. Since 2019, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has made it very clear that children and young people need to be its No. 1 priority. A complete overhaul is needed, as the challenge in 2019 was, quite frankly, immense. Children’s services in Stoke-on-Trent have never been rated good or outstanding. An Ofsted inspection in early 2019 showed that the situation was dire—that is the only word I can use to describe the quality of services available to more than 1,000 of the most vulnerable young children in our city, who required us to look after them. Children’s services received the worst possible rating of inadequate from Ofsted, and inspectors uncovered multiple failings, which left youngsters at risk of harm.

Since May 2019, Councillor Dave Evans, who was appointed to the children and young people portfolio, has been working with Councillor Abi Brown, the leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, and has made big strides to improve fostering services across the Potteries. Ably assisted by team manager Kate Bailey and recruitment officer Marie Plant, Councillor Evans and his team have radically changed the council’s approach. The council has been pushing hard to get as many organisations signed up to the fostering friendly scheme, the Fostering Network’s programme to encourage employers to support fostering and, in particular, foster carers. Stoke City Football Club, Bet365, Staffordshire police, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and health groups are all now signed up to the scheme. That effort is part of the team’s new approach to running family services.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this enormously important debate, which is a personal debate for me. My contribution will not be about policy. I have a responsibility and a privilege to give a fraternal address from Scotland.

The route into care in Scotland is very different, but the needs and complexities of the children are similar, and they always must come first. I will talk a little bit about my route into foster care as a carer. I will not talk about our family because I am fiercely protective of my children.

My partner and I have been together for nearly 30 years. We lived in London for many years and we spoke often about our options to have a family. We had three protracted and ultimately failed surrogacy attempts, but it was always clear to me that the genetics of the child were not important. What was important was the provision of a loving home and providing a role model or someone who would believe in the child. I do not know whether there is evidence for this principle, but I believe it. Just one person believing in a young person who has experienced trauma or difficulty in their early years can lift them out of that dreadful dark hole and give them a bright future.

I have been involved, in one form or another, in the care of children and young people since being a volunteer with the then Scottish Society for the Mentally Handicapped when I was at school. I have been a nurse for most of my career, specialising in adolescent cancer. When we returned to Scotland, as a gay couple we discovered that we could foster and adopt, so we threw ourselves into that process and ultimately chose to foster. There are two principal reasons why we made that choice: the support that would be available to us directly through Barnardo’s, which is now a partner organisation, and the support that would be available, because no one can know what will happen with a placement, to the young people that came to us. I would be lying, which is not in vogue at the moment, if I did not say it was an enormous challenge. The first two years really stretched us. I am not talking from personal experience with our kids, but children who have been through multiple placements, suffered abuse and neglect, lived in deprivation and been traumatised come with complex needs. Foster carers have to surrender themselves to that, because if they expect a child to come into their home and surrender themselves to the carers, but they are not prepared to make that commitment themselves, then ultimately the placement could fail.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I commend the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) who introduced the debate and who set the scene for us with her knowledge, interests and life story. I thank the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) for his personal story. It was good to hear those personal stories from the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman because they help us all to enjoy, endorse and support the theme under discussion. I am not leaving out the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), by the way. He brought his own experiences as a teacher, which I thank him for.

The covid-19 pandemic has had many side effects. I will give the Northern Ireland perspective; I know that is not the responsibility of the Minister, but it adds to the debate and it complements what has been said and what will be said. Increasing numbers of children and young people in Northern Ireland are urgently in need of a loving and safe home. For many families on the brink, covid was the final straw, and familial relationships bore the strain of it all—I noticed that over the past couple of years, and others probably did too. I am aware that there are many foster parents in Ards and in my constituency of Strangford who already give a home to children and young people. I know from discussions with them that some of those young people come from very difficult homes, and just being part of a family unit is very important to them. They receive the warmth that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath referred to—the love that is so vital for them—in abundance in their foster homes.

I have a very good friend, whose name I am not going to mention. He and his wife have three of their own children and foster five or six. That is a massive family, by the way; whenever they go on holiday, it takes a minibus to take them away, and whenever they jump on the plane, they take up a large section of that plane. The point I am making is that that couple in Portavogie in my constituency give love, affection, assurance and confidence to vulnerable young children who are quite challenging. They have told me some stories; I am not going to repeat them, because they are very personal, but there are people who have the capacity, the understanding, and perhaps the patience that is needed to make that happen.

Mr Robertson, as Chair, you have a very privileged position, because you hear in Westminster Hall debates some truly remarkable stories. We have heard some today. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for the work that she has done on this issue and for securing the debate, but that is trite—there is no merit in securing a debate. The merit lies in what she said and in the experience that she brought to it. Similarly, I was hugely moved by the words of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey). That is what is remarkable: sometimes, we learn so much more about our colleagues in this Chamber than we ever expected to. We also heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who spoke of his own experience in secondary school.

We have heard today about the power of love and how it can transform lives. It can change a child’s life and set it on a new path. I pay tribute to all those from the Fostering Network who are here in the Public Gallery for the work that they do. I salute them. That service often is not in the vanguard of the public’s imagination, but clearly, what we have heard today means that it should be. It is extraordinary work and it takes extraordinary strength, resilience and compassion to do it. That is what this debate has brought out.

Let me turn to the debate itself and look at the annual fostering statistics. Ofsted has told us that the number of children in care is at its highest ever level in England. I know what the Minister will say. He will no doubt tell us that the number of carers is also at an all-time high, but he knows that the number of children in need of care is at an all-time high. The question that he must answer is not a technical one of provision and so on; it is this: why are so many children in need of fostering care? What is breaking down in our society that means that we have an all-time high and we need even more places than we have? What stress are families are experiencing and what pain—social and economic—are they going through that means we need so many more fostering places because families cannot cope on their own?