Careers: Foster carer

Is fostering a career in its own right?
Fostering has much in common with other jobs in the children’s sector – a foster carer will work alongside a team of professionals to provide temporary care to a child who cannot be looked after by their own family. Elaine Dibben, adoption and foster care development consultant at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, says: “Fostering is a complex role. While foster carers are charged with caring for children and treating them as one of the family, they are also parenting and supporting traumatised and abused children.

“They work as part of the team supporting the child which consists of social workers and health professionals. Fostering is therefore recognised as being a professional service.”

Do foster carers get paid?
All foster carers receive an allowance to cover the cost of caring for a child in their home. The government has introduced national minimum allowances for foster carers in England. For 2012 this ranges from £114 for babies to £201 for 16- and 17-year-olds in London.

Many local authorities and fostering agencies pay foster carers a fee linked to the child’s particular needs or to the abilities, length of experience or professional expertise of the foster carer.

Can you be a foster carer and have another job as well?
In general, working full time in another job is seen as incompatible with fostering, as foster carers need to be available to attend meetings and training, and facilitate contact with a child’s birth family. Part-time workers can take on certain kinds of fostering such as short-break or support care.

What training and qualifications are required?
No formal qualifications are needed, but potential foster carers will receive training to develop the necessary skills. Once approved, foster carers are expected to undertake ongoing professional learning and development to help maintain and develop these skills.

Training will help carers to understand the principles behind their role and related expectations, such as recording information about children. It will also cover health and safety, communication skills, understanding of child development and an awareness of safe caring and safeguarding, as well as practical examples of managing challenging behaviour and promoting independence skills for young people.

“For carers who have previously worked in childcare settings, there may be some relevant training that they have already completed,” says Dibben. “But there may sometimes be a need to revisit training already completed to understand it in the context of fostering.”

Who employs foster carers?
Foster carers are not “employed”, they are “approved” by either a local authority or an independent fostering provider. The distinction is important because foster carers are treated as self-employed for tax purposes, and benefit from a simplified income tax scheme called qualifying care relief. They are also able to disregard fostering income when applying for means-tested benefits.

Are there different types of fostering?
Carers can specialise in certain types of fostering, such as emergency fostering, short-term or long-term fostering, helping young people about to leave care to live independently, or providing shared care for a child to give their own family or foster carers a break, for example for a few hours a week. Specially trained foster carers can also take both young parents and their babies into their home, teaching them how to care for their baby.

How many foster carers are there?
In the UK there are at least 45,000 foster families. The Fostering Network estimates that fostering services across the UK need to recruit a further 8,750 families during 2012.

How is current policy impacting on the role?
Responsibility for workforce development for foster carers moved from the Children’s Workforce Development Council to the Department for Education at the end of March. The department is researching the recruitment and retention of foster carers, training and support, and the commissioning of fostering services in an attempt to “understand what is working well and review where there may be room for improvement”. “It is expected that they will make announcements about improvements in the summer,” says Dibben.

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