Children and Families Act: Foster care

What is happening?

The Children and Families Act introduces a requirement on local authorities to allow young people to stay in foster care up to the age of 21, referred to as "staying-put arrangements".

The legislation also amends the Children Act 1989 to make it easier for prospective adopters to foster children. The aim is to ensure that more children can live with their permanent carers at the earliest possible stage of the adoption process.

Who does it affect?

The changes will affect local authority fostering teams and fostering agencies that will have to ascertain whether young people approaching the age of 18 want to stay in foster care and whether their foster parents want them to stay, as well as sorting out financial arrangements. The legislation around fostering for adoption will have implications for local authority children's social workers.

Implications for practice

It is likely to take some time before young people remaining in foster care up to the age of 21 is seen as the norm rather than a possible option, with a final decision taken as the young person approaches 18.

Robert Tapsfield, chief executive at the Fostering Network, says it would be detrimental to young people if there is a period between the ages of 17 and 18 where a decision on whether to continue fostering is taken, because the lack of certainty would be unsettling.

To avoid this scenario, he says local authorities have some "knotty" issues to resolve. Chief among these is the level of support provided to foster carers.

An evaluation of staying put arrangement pilots indicates that the level of financial support paid by local authorities to foster carers varied across trial authorities depending on their individual circumstances and their financial arrangements for fostering. Some authorities continued to pay carers the same amount they were being paid prior to the young person turning 18, but, in other areas, foster carers received less money on the basis that expectations upon them changed when the young person reached 18. In a number of cases, foster carers objected to reduced payments as they did not feel that their responsibilities had diminished.

"Most current staying put schemes pay foster carers at a lower level than when the child they are fostering is 17," Tapsfield says. "In the longer term, this will have to change.

"The child's needs do not suddenly change once they are 18. There is no reason to think foster carers can suddenly manage with less money than before.

"It is essential that these issues are resolved in order that there is no break or point where a new decision is taken when children reach 18."

The evaluation also found that the quality of relationships between the foster parents and child, and the extent to which secure attachments had been established, are key factors influencing both foster carers' decisions to extend placements and young people's willingness to stay put, highlighting the importance of effective care planning and matching.

Unresolved issues

In terms of fostering for adoption, Tapsfield points to a danger that children could miss out on a kinship placement, due to pressure to place them with foster carers who could adopt them.

He is also concerned about the implications for siblings, in that, allied with new guidance that means social workers must no longer assume they should be kept together, more could be split up from stable foster placements.

"The government has always said that there is no hierarchy of options and that what is important is to make the right placement for each child," Tapsfield says. "We would all accept the importance of them living with foster carers who eventually adopt them.

"But children who could grow up in foster care with their siblings should not be separated in order that they can be adopted. If they are already living with foster carers, is it better if they continue to live in foster care together or should they be separated?

"The new policy shifts the balance towards adoption, and some would say being able to grow up with your siblings is terribly important."

Cathy Ashley, chief executive of the Family Rights Group, has also raised concerns about fostering to adopt.

She says it could result in children being placed with a potential adopter without the parent having received legal advice, and without a judge or court getting advice whether they should be removed from their parents. "There are not the checks and balances there should be," she says.

Meanwhile, the move to extend support for young people in foster care up to the age of 21 has led to growing calls for the same support for young people in residential care.

In January, children's minister Edward Timpson announced that Department for Education officials will work alongside the National Children's Bureau, the Who Cares? Trust and Catch22 to "look at the practical issues of introducing staying-put arrangements in children's homes over the coming year".

The cost of implementing 'staying put arrangements'

£40m - amount of funding the government has allocated to the initiative over three years

£5,400 - cost of each staying put placement (based on an estimated 8,000 eligible young people)

£263,158 - amount each local authority will be allocated if the £40m is divided equally between all 152

Source: DfE