End profiteering from foster care, campaigners urge
Joe Lepper
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Children’s charities have stepped up their campaign to call for an end to private care companies profiteering from fostering.
The campaign group Fairer Fostering Partnership (FFP) has launched a social media push using the hashtag #forchildrennotprofit, to promote commissioning care placements using not-for-profit and charitable fostering agencies, rather than commercial fostering firms.
The group is concerned that commercial fostering organisations are owned by private and venture capital companies that make “significant profits for shareholders”.
Instead, the FFP believes that any profit from foster care should be re-invested into children’s services.
“Excessive profit has no place in the care of vulnerable children,” says the group.
It adds: “FFP members work purely for children, not for profit, and in a financially strapped sector funded by taxpayers helping thousands of vulnerable children in care, it is important that local authorities and foster carers are able to make an informed choice as to which fostering providers they work with."
The Fairer Fostering Partnership believes that where a surplus is made, it should be re-invested into children’s services; and that excessive profit has no place in the care of vulnerable children. 2/2#forchildrennotprofit
— Fairer Fostering (@FairerFostering) May 13, 2021
Click link to find out more:https://t.co/EuVzTMjAUQ pic.twitter.com/PIkgDLf5cR
FFP members include Action for Children, Barnardo’s and The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT).
TACT chief executive and FFP chair Andy Elvin said: “All our members’ resources are invested in meeting the needs of vulnerable children and young people, and not in making a profit from them.
“This transparency and accountability is welcomed by local authorities and foster carers alike, but we need to continue promoting the message that excessive profits are being made by some agencies at a time when there is less money in the system. That clearly can’t be a good thing for children in care.”
This week the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) also raised concerns about the use of profit-making companies to provide children’s care.
Its 2021 position paper says there is a “worrying increase in the number of large organisations, backed by private equity investors, entering into children’s residential and fostering services”.
It adds “the ability of private equity companies to extract huge profit from the care of children is concerning, as is the level of debt and the implications that financial failure would mean for children and young people”.
