Foster carers’ feedback on the children’s social care review in England
By Jacqui Shurlock and Vicki Swain, Joint Head of Policy and Campaigns
Over the last few months, we asked you to share your views on the final report of the independent review of children’s social care in England. You did so through our care review survey, at focus groups and in forum meetings. Thank you to everyone who got involved!
In this blog, we will tell you how we will be using your feedback. We are also looking at the recommendations you think would do most to improve outcomes for children and young people. The blog features the views of the 665 foster carers who responded to our survey or attended our forums and consultation events.
What has happened so far
The final report of the independent review of children’s social care was published in May and submitted to the Government. Amongst all the political turmoil in recent months, we were delighted to hear the Prime Minister announce, at her first Prime Minister’s questions, that the Government intends to publish its response to the review before the end of this year.
We are hugely grateful to you, our members, for sharing your views on the foster care recommendations in the final report as well as engaging with and sharing your views throughout the whole review process. As Josh MacAlister said in the report, you are ‘some of the most remarkable people in society’ and we have been clear in all our meetings with Ministers, officials and the care review team that any change to the fostering system must be informed by your views and experiences.
What is happening with your feedback
The Fostering Network policy and campaigns team are working hard to analyse your responses to our survey, which will form the basis of our written response to the Government. We will share some of the findings through blogs as we go along, so you don’t have to wait for the full written response to hear back from us. We will also cover feedback from fostering services.
Here is what you told us
You told us you foster because you want to make a difference to the lives of children in care. We thought that was a good starting point to examine the recommendations against. We asked whether you thought the fostering recommendations in the report were likely to improve outcomes for children. Here’s what you said:
Recommendations for improving outcomes for children in detail
- Delegated authority: There was a clear consensus that delegated authority by default is a welcome recommendation, with over 80 per cent believing it likely to have a positive impact on children’s outcomes and lots of detailed input about how best to make that work. ‘They ask us to treat the children as our own, but they make it near impossible. There are lots of ways we can't treat them as we would our own.’. - Foster carer
'They ask us to treat the children as our own, but they make it near impossible. There are lots of ways we can't treat them as we would our own.'
- Staying Put: Over three quarters of foster carers who filled in our survey thought that Staying Put as a legal entitlement and extended to age 23 would improve outcomes for children, however, there was a very clear message that financial support must be reformed, as many simply can’t afford to offer Staying Put at present.
- Mockingbird: Not everyone who completed our survey had experience of the Mockingbird Family Model so this had a higher number of neutral responses, but over half of foster carers felt that developing a model of foster care support based on the principles of Mockingbird would improve outcomes for children. Those who were in Mockingbird constellations emphasised the positive impact it has on stability for children and retention and recruitment of foster carers.
- Recruitment and retention: Around half of respondents agreed that recruiting 9,000 new foster carers over the next three years was a good idea. Almost all respondents (whether they agreed or disagreed) made the point that retention is equally, if not more, important than recruitment. We have a huge number of comments on this topic – we are working through them all and will cover this in a separate blog.
- Family group decision making and independent advocacy: Over half of the foster carers who responded to our survey thought the proposals around family group decision making would make a positive difference to children. This would involve local authorities identifying important adults (e.g., family, friends, teachers) that are already known to a child and may be willing to foster. There were some reservations whether teachers would have the capacity to fulfil this role.
The recommendation to replace Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) and Section 44 Visitor roles with a new ‘opt-out’ advocacy service had the most mixed response, often depending on the experience foster carers and children had with individuals in those roles. We have lots of comments to share with the Government about your views on how to ensure advocacy, scrutiny and challenge to ensure children’s needs are best met.
Next blog
You were clear that there were many other reforms, not covered by the review, which would enable foster carers to better support children to thrive. Our next blog will focus on what you said was missing from the review.
