Foster care: policy context

Since 2014/15, the overall number of children in foster care has risen by 11 per cent from 52,000 to 57,380 living with 45,000 foster families.

The proportion of fostered children placed with an unrelated carer has declined from 60 per cent in 2018 to 56 per cent last year, with a corresponding rise from 13 to 15 per cent in the proportion living with a relative or friend over the same period.

Around 64 per cent of fostered children are placed with local authority foster carers and 36 per cent with IFA carers. There is a similar split between councils and independent providers when it comes to fostering households. Fostered children tend to be placed closer to home than children in other forms of care setting.

Ofsted’s latest Fostering in England report shows that four in 10 fostered children live in non-permanent placements, defined as somewhere that is not planned to last until the child reaches 18, and a third in permanent places (see graphics). These figures have stayed roughly the same for the past six years, however recent research by the University of East Anglia shows that between 2016 and 2019, there was a near 10 per cent decline in the number of children classified as in long-term foster placements, although researchers warn that this could be due to changes in recording practice (see research evidence).

The Ofsted data also finds the proportion of children placed with family and friends carers had risen from 18 to 20 per cent over the same six-year period, thanks largely to a seven percentage point rise in the proportion placed by local authorities. This could be the result of the drive in recent years across children’s social care departments to prioritise seeking out extended families in the early stages of care planning.

Over the last seven years, the general trend has been of a slow increase in numbers of places, with a nine per cent increase since March 2015. However, this increase has not kept up with demand. This is because there are not always sufficient appropriate foster care placements for children, despite there being more approved places than children.

There are 88,000 approved places, of which 60 per cent are local authority places and 40 per cent by IFAs. Around two-thirds of places are filled but one in five are unavailable for a variety of reasons, as described by Ofsted: “When looking at the differences in reasons for these unavailable places between sectors, IFAs tended to have higher proportions of unavailable places due to the needs of the child currently in placement (19 per cent) and places only available if a sibling group is placed (22 per cent). Local authorities tended to have more places unavailable due to the carer taking a break or pending resignation (21 per cent). However, across both sectors, the most common reason given for unavailable places was for ‘carer reasons (not otherwise stated)’.”

Recruitment and retention

While the number of fostering households and carers has gone up, Ofsted research suggests that the range of carers available aren’t always able to meet children’s increasingly complex needs.

“As the number of children in care continues to grow, matching them with the right carers becomes increasingly difficult. This makes it more likely that very vulnerable children will face placement breakdowns and further disruption to their lives,” Ofsted’s report states.

The inspectorate also highlights that the rise in placements with family and friends carers – 58 per cent of the 8,880 new foster care households appointed during 2020 and 2021 – does not have a substantial impact on overall capacity because of the “limited nature of their role”.

Most fostering households are approved for two children (39 per cent) and three children (35 per cent). In 2020/21, IFAs recruited an additional 525 households providing 776 places but local authorities reported a decline of 35 households and 325 places overall. The large decrease in places was due to a high number of households approved for three or more places being deregistered, with new approvals of this type of home being much lower. This could be as a result of older, more experienced foster carers leaving the sector through retirement or amid concerns over Covid.

The report also shows that although record levels of enquiries were received from prospective fostering households last year, these aren’t translating into applications. Of 160,000 initial enquiries from prospective fostering households, only around 10,000 resulted in applications – a rate of one in 16 compared with one in eight in 2015. Although four in five initial enquires came from the IFA sector, only one in 25 converted into an application, compared with one in seven of those from councils.

Yvette Stanley, Ofsted’s national director for social care, said the statistics painted a bleak picture on the health of the sector. “Year on year we see more children coming into foster care, and too few carers with the right skills to give them the support they deserve. How long can this go on before the care system reaches breaking point?”

The Fostering Network’s latest State of the Nation report found that just a handful of fostering services surveyed said they had sufficient foster carers to meet the needs of local children, with a particular shortage of placements for large sibling groups, children with disabilities and teenagers.

More than a third of foster carers surveyed said the allowance they received from the council failed to meet the full costs of their child’s care, while only half received sufficient information about a child in advance of a placement. Better pay, support and training would help improve recruitment and retention, the Network said.

The recent rise in demand has led to some charities like Barnardo’s to run campaigns for more foster carers. Meanwhile, Mark Owers co-author of the 2018 government-commissioned review of foster care has called for a national recruitment campaign akin to that used to promote adoption, a view shared by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (see ADCS view).

Amid a decline in foster carers in 2020 during the pandemic many local authorities developed their own recruitment campaigns which led to a surge in enquiries by people who had no experience of fostering. Many utilised social media channels and innovative ways of explaining to potential foster carers what the role entails and how rewarding it can be (see practice example).

Another recent development has been the advent of councils offering incentive payments to new foster carers upon the placement of a child and to existing carers when they refer a successful applicant. A Freedom of Information investigation by CYP Now has found that some councils are now offering more than £1,000 in incentive payments, with many claiming it is boosting recruitment. However, some sector experts are concerned that the approach could backfire (see analysis).

Reforms and the future

The Case for Change, the Care Review’s first report, highlighted the high cost to councils of using IFAs to place children. It states that £1.2bn was spent on private sector fostering agencies in 2019/20 and suggests that councils are paying over the odds for places. It quotes figures showing council placements are substantially cheaper than those provided by private companies, which it says are profiteering by charging high fees. However, the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers says such comparisons are unfair highlighting that IFAs “generally care for older young people with higher needs and spend more on their services”.

“Local authorities tend not to fully cost their own fostering services, nor do they compare like-for-like services with IFAs. IFAs provide additional services which address stability and risk, undoubtedly resulting in fewer placement breakdowns as a result,” adds NAFP chief executive Harvey Gallagher.

The Case for Change also indicates that there needs to be wholesale reforms to the way placements are commissioned to address inconsistency in practice. Charity The Child and Adolescent Trust says one solution is to remove placement finding from councils with the responsibility given to a national public body. Such a move would improve the quality of care and reduce costs, Tact believes.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also been undertaking a study into the children’s care “market” for the past year. Its interim findings, published last October, found that there are “too often no placements available, in children’s homes, with foster carers or in independent accommodation, that fully meet the needs of children – with some being too far away or requiring siblings to be separate”.

It finds that “considerable time pressure” faced by local authorities to find an appropriate placement “inherently weakens” their position in the market resulting in them paying higher prices than they otherwise would.

“As a result, large private sector providers of children’s homes and fostering services appear to have been making higher profits in England and Wales than the CMA would expect in a well-functioning market,” the CMA states.

However, the CMA’s interim report adds that it has not seen evidence of systematic differences in the outcomes of care for children between local authority and independent provision.

New figures from the interim report show that in 2020, the average weekly price for an independent foster care placement was around £820.

The CMA is due to publish its final report in March, alongside the Care Review findings. The reforms put forward in these key reports could remake the fostering landscape assuming policymakers stick to their word of acting on the recommendations in full.

ADCS VIEW
REVIEWS MUST CREATE CONDITIONS FOR MORE FOSTER CARE PLACES

By Charlotte Ramsden, ADCS president 2021/22

Throughout the pandemic we’ve read about the doctors, nurses and staff in education settings going above and beyond to deliver essential services. Foster carers should be mentioned too. They, like social workers, residential care workers and countless others, continue to provide vital support to the children and young people they care for in these exceptional times.

For most children and young people who cannot live with their own families, foster care provides them with a family environment in which they can thrive. This may be for a short period or on a longer-term basis. Foster care can be the right route to permanence for some children but we are yet to see it given the same national policy attention and investment as adoption, despite these children having similar needs to those who are adopted.

The spotlight is well and truly on the care system with the forthcoming publications of the independent Care Review and the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) study into children’s social care. Both the review and CMA study have pressing issues to contend with which stand in the way of securing the best outcomes for children and young people in care. There is much to be celebrated: care can and does change lives, but both pieces of work must not shy away from challenging the parts of the system that simply aren’t working for children and that stand in the way of local authorities meeting our statutory duties. For example, local authorities have a responsibility to ensure a range of placements are available locally but there is a shortage across all types, particularly for children with the most complex needs.

The challenge of recruiting enough fosters carers is significant. For many years ADCS has called for a national recruitment and retention campaign, funded by government, to encourage more foster carers to come forward. A national campaign would complement local campaigns being run by local authorities. This is the only way to ensure the right foster home is available at the right time for every child who needs it. A bigger pool of foster carers means more placement choice which can only be a good thing for children.

In addition to these sufficiency issues, ADCS members are concerned about significant profits being made from fostering by a small number of organisations. Local authorities are the sole purchasers of these places and when demand for places rises so do costs. Tough decisions then need to be made about the services we can provide. However, vulnerable children are most adversely affected by these practices because money is being taken out of the system which could otherwise be reinvested into improving their outcomes. This cannot be justified.