News

Foster Care Fortnight 2017, Northern Ireland’s largest celebration of fostering, was launched yesterday (Monday 8 May) at an event in the MAC, Belfast  by The Fostering Network in partnership with the Regional Adoption and Fostering Service and hosted by the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.

More than 7,000 new foster families are needed in the coming year to ensure that all children can be found the right foster home first time, according to leading fostering charity The Fostering Network at the start of this year’s Foster Care Fortnight (8-21 May). The need is particularly for families to offer homes to teenagers and groups of brothers and sisters.

With this in mind, we are asking everybody with an interest in foster care to promote The Fostering Network’s foster carers’ charter to any prospective councillors they meet.  Having a charter in place helps foster carers get the recognition they deserve and need to provide children with the best possible care.

These headlines from our sample charter show what a strong and collaborative fostering service looks like. Challenge your local politicians to commit to a fostering service that can offer foster carers:

The Westminster Government has issued a call for evidence for its stocktake of foster care in England.

The stocktake, announced last year, is seeking to understand what currently works well and why, where improvements are needed to achieve better outcomes for fostered children and identify areas where more research is needed.

Following the publication of the Children Commissioner for England’s Stability Index, Melissa Green, director of operations at The Fostering Network, said: ’We welcome this report as it sheds further light on one of the major issues affecting children in care today.

Written, produced and directed by the young champions, the film aims to tackle the stigma surrounding children in care. They presented the film at the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 30 March at a reception hosted by Liam McArthur MSP. The audience included foster carers and their families, fostering services, and a number of other MSPs and ministers.

The Fostering Network has teamed up with the BBC to produce a new campaign calling for more foster carers. Narrated by care leaver Hollie, the short film shows how foster care can transform the lives of children and young people. Joseph, also a care leaver, is featured in the film. Now studying for his Masters, he is a shining example of how the right foster carers can change a young person’s life. He told us his story in this blog.

On Wednesday 22 March, The Fostering Network bid a fond farewell to our president, Jim Bond. After celebrating more than a decade in the role he is now passing the baton on to Libby Thornhill who was recently appointed as his replacement.

Responding to the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children (APPGC) report, No Good Options, which brings together information gathered through their inquiry, Kevin Williams, chief executive of The Fostering Network, said: 'We welcome the publication of this report for which we submitted written and oral evidence based on the results of a UK-wide survey of foster carers on the impact of funding cuts to local authority budgets.

The Fostering Network is delighted to have been successful in securing further funding for the next phase of the pioneering Mockingbird programme.

An additional £3.76m has been allocated from the Department for Education’s Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to work with new partners as well as testing additional innovations to the model.