Letters to the Editor: Tackling foster carer shortage

(Improving foster carer recruitment, CYP Now July 2021). The Social Market Foundation’s stats are stark, estimating a shortfall of 25,000 foster families over the next five years. While some might say we’re heading for a foster carer recruitment crisis, I sometimes feel like we’re living one right now and that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

As we make a meandering recovery from the pandemic, I worry deeply about the devastating impact it will have had on some of the most vulnerable families. The pressures on these families were intensified by the wide-reaching side effects of Covid and now we see a backlog in the family courts meaning children will come into foster care with more complex needs.

I support the call to government to run a national foster carer recruitment campaign. There’s never been a more crucial time for us all to pull together and raise awareness of fostering. To make this successful we need a two-pronged approach: to learn from those in the sector about what works to incentivise people to foster, and to overcome what is making this dedicated workforce contemplate early “retirement”.

Ensuring we have highly trained respite carers who can offer breaks to our carers is fundamental, but this is challenging in the wake of a national recruitment crisis. The government-led recruitment strategy needs to address this. We cannot run an effective foster care service without suitable respite.

I have seen half-hearted attempts at fostering charters in years gone by, but these have never gone far enough. All providers should be held to account by national minimum standards and we should all be able to evidence that we properly pay, train and look after our carers.

Then there’s the psychological support. These are intense jobs which come with huge highs and challenging lows. We have to equip carers, through training and psychological supervision, to understand their children’s world and how they interact with it. This is a fundamental part of our foster carer support package; we wouldn’t run our fostering services at Five Rivers Child Care without it.

Fortunately, we haven’t seen a mass exodus of our carers, but we’re acutely aware of the pressures the pandemic has put on them. We have thanked and acknowledged our incredible carers who opened their doors, when many others were closing. Can we thank them enough? I’m not sure we can. Can we take curative action to address this recruitment crisis? I think we can.

Martin Leitch, head of fostering operations, Five Rivers Child Care

Rethink childcare ratios in challenging times

Across the UK, while some nursery owners report that they are trading ahead of pre-Covid occupancy levels, many have waiting lists in place because they don’t have adequate staff to meet this demand. Other providers, however, are seeing low levels of occupancy as some parents aren’t returning their children to settings as anticipated. It is these settings that are likely to have some difficult decisions in relation to staff as furlough ends as, if there is insufficient occupancy demand, those roles are not presently required. This comes at a time when nurseries in other parts of the country are crying out for skilled, dedicated, professional early years practitioners.

Unlike in other business sectors, early years workforce challenges are not a new post-Covid phenomena. Over the past decade there has been considerable debate on whether there may be scope to relax childcare ratio requirements. The case for maintaining ratios to ensure quality prevails is compelling in respects, however, we remain in unprecedented times, which could mean due consideration of change is required, even if temporary.

As we head further into autumn, while workforce challenges may be overcome or could become even more challenging, from a market perspective we expect the lack of supply to largely prevail.

Courteney Donaldson, managing director, childcare and education, Christie & Co